Ethernet hub EN108tp

[garychalker]

Hi all,
can anyone please tell me if Ethernet hub EN180tp should work with X Box live?

[Orbital]

I did some research on the EN Series hubs. . .

The EN Series hubs are end of life, and are no longer supported by NETGEAR.

I wouldn't recommend this for an XBOX if you're connecting more devices to it.

What is the difference between an Ethernet hub and switch?

Although hubs and switches both glue the PCs in a network together, a switch is more expensive and a network built with switches is generally considered faster than one built with hubs.

Why?

When a hub receives a packet of data or a frame at one of its ports from a PC on the network, it transmits (repeats) the packet to all of its ports and, thus, to all of the other PCs on the network. If two or more PCs on the network try to send packets at the same time a collision is said to occur. When that happens all of the PCs have to go though a routine to resolve the conflict. The process is prescribed in the Ethernet Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol. Each Ethernet Adapter has both a receiver and a transmitter. If the adapters didn't have to listen with their receivers for collisions they would be able to send data at the same time they are receiving it (full duplex). Because they have to operate at half duplex (data flows one way at a time) and a hub retransmits data from one PC to all of the PCs, the maximum bandwidth is 100 Mhz and that bandwidth is shared by all of the PC's connected to the hub. The result is when a person using a computer on a hub downloads a large file or group of files from another computer the network becomes congested. In a 10 Mhz 10Base-T network the affect is to slow the network to nearly a crawl.


An Ethernet switch automatically divides the network into multiple segments, acts as a high-speed, selective bridge between the segments, and supports simultaneous connections of multiple pairs of computers which don't compete with other pairs of computers for network bandwidth. It accomplishes this by maintaining a table of each destination address and its port. When the switch receives a packet, it reads the destination address from the header information in the packet, establishes a temporary connection between the source and destination ports, sends the packet on its way, and then terminates the connection.

[fordem]

In a small network hubs generally work fine - as Orbital has pointed out - this is an old 10 mbps hub, slow by todays standards, but faster than your typical internet connection - try it and see how it works, what have you got to lose?