Redes y concentradores

Concentrador (HUB)

hub is a device for connecting multiple twisted pair or fiber optic Ethernet devices together and making them act as a single network segment. Hubs work at the physical layer (layer 1) of the OSI model. The device is a form of multiport repeater. Repeater hubs also participate in collision detection, forwarding a jam signal to all ports if it detects a collision.
When a hubreceives a packet of data at one of its ports from a PC on the network, it transmits 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 EthernetCarrier 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 datafrom 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. The affect on a small, 100 Mbps(million bits per scond), 5-port network is not as significant.
Historically, the main reason for purchasing hubs rather than switches was their price. This motivator has largely been eliminated by reductions in the price of switches, but hubs can still be useful in special circumstances:
• For inserting a protocol analyzer into a network connection, a hub is an alternative to a network tap orport mirroring.
• When a switch is accessible for end users to make connections, for example, in a conference room, an inexperienced or careless user (or saboteur) can bring down the network by connecting two ports together, causing a loop. This can be prevented by using a hub, where a loop will break other users on the hub, but not the rest of the network. This hazard can also be avoided by usingswitches that can detect and deal with loops, for example by implementing the spanning tree protocol.
• A hub with a 10BASE2 port can be used to connect devices that only support 10BASE2 to a modern network. The same goes for linking in an old 10BASE5 network segment using an AUI port on a hub (individual devices that were intended for thicknet can be linked to modern Ethernet by using anAUI-10BASE-T transceiver).

Cableado de red (Network cabling)
Twisted pair cabling comes in two varieties: shielded and unshielded. Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) is the most popular and is generally the best option for school networks
he quality of UTP may vary from telephone-grade wire to extremely high-speed cable. The cable has four pairs of wires inside the jacket. Each pair is twisted with adifferent number of twists per inch to help eliminate interference from adjacent pairs and other electrical devices. The tighter the twisting, the higher the supported transmission rate and the greater the cost per foot. The EIA/TIA (Electronic Industry Association/Telecommunication Industry Association) has established standards of UTP and rated six categories of wire (additional categories areemerging)
Unshielded Twisted Pair Connector
The standard connector for unshielded twisted pair cabling is an RJ-45 connector. This is a plastic connector that looks like a large telephone-style connector (See fig. 2). A slot allows the RJ-45 to be inserted only one way. RJ stands for Registered Jack, implying that the connector follows a standard borrowed from the telephone industry. This standard...