Hub Hardware opinions please

Sourdaisy and Daemon, please forgive me if you feel I have posted this in the wrong forum, but I felt that the networking community would be more likely to give me an opinion than the General Hardware forum

A colleague has offered me a redundant Baystack 101 hub w/12 RJ45 at a considerable reduction in price. At present, I have 2 standalone PCs and 2 networked putas (using a crossover cable) at home. I really would like to have the other two on the network, but was concerned that I might be going for overkill going with the 101. Anybody have any reservations, or should I go for it?

Thanks in advance, and Happy Thanksgiving!!! https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

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Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most

[This message has been edited by putasolutions (edited 11-22-2001).]

[This message has been edited by putasolutions (edited 11-22-2001).]

It looks like a 10baseT hub, for 4 machines it would work fine. For my money I'd go for a 10/100 hub myself, I like the extra speed, it's great for transfering larger files from one machine to another.

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My corner of the round world

if you are thinking about cable or dsl in the future skip the hub and go straight for the linksys befsr41 (4port) or befsr81 (8port) router/switch...this has built in 10/100 switch that will handle your network throughput as well as a future broadband connection

That hub has a few more network management capabilities than your basic "home" hub/switch, but it's not clear you need that. It's also only a 10base-T hub, limiting you to 10mbit transfers (don't know what network cards you have) and not providing the non-shared bandwidth of a switch. For basic home networking a 5 (or more if you need it) port autosensing 10/100 switch might serve you better. And, as Sarrkazztic said, if you have plans to share a cable/dsl connection, then you want to go the combo router/switch route.

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[This message has been edited by DrMDJ (edited 11-23-2001).]

Many thanks to everyone for their input and advice.

I shall decline the offer and look in the 10/100Mbs direction as you all suggested https://discussions.virtualdr.com/.


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Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most