Switches and hubs, the difference is a hub network will be sent the packet to all of a user is connected to the hub of the computer. While exchange only packets to the specified destination computer (through the ARP protocol), can reduce data collisions on relative opportunities and data to be tapped. Switch will also spread to more grouping processing respectively, and hubs are not. Biggest difference is that the Hub of each interface in the same collision domain, and the switch of each interface in a collision domain. Especially in terms of performance, such as in the 100 MB/s Ethernet network has 100 users, use the Hub, each user is only 1 MB/s (100 MB/s / 100), because the Hub is a Shared network, while the use of switches, each interface has a 100 MB/s, if there are 100 interface, the total bandwidth of 100 * 100 MB/s, because the switches is independent of network.

From a general point of view, switches can be divided into two kinds: the wan and LAN switch. Wan switches is mainly used in telecommunications, providing foundation platform of communication. The LAN switch is applied in the local area network, used to connect the terminal equipment, such as PC and network printers.