Hub-ba, Hub-ba - NetGear EN 104 Hub (Netgear DS104)

Member Name: LegendaryMrDude

Product:	Netgear DS104
Date:	11/01/03 (3011 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Small, Well built

Disadvantages: Limited to 10Mbps

From time-to-time, I get overtaken by the need to buy a gadget.

One such occassion caught me in PC World, where they were selling network hubs at a bargain price. I know it's hard to believe but, every now and again, PC World are actually cheaper than some mail-ordr stores. Anyway I had a developing need to link a few PCs together at home. Nothing fancy you understand, just so that my Girlfriend could share my cablemodem connection from her PC and also provide a bit of space for friends should they arrive to play a multi-player game.

So my requirements were quite simple, somewhere between 4 and 10 ports would suit my needs. Ideally I wanted something that would support both 10Mbps and 100Mbps network speeds as this would allow me to reap the benefits of the higher transfer rates offered by newer network cards. It was at this point that I had a tricky decision to make. Netgear, a company which have made a name for themselves by making solid, reliable home netorking equipment, had two devices on offer that met my initial needs. They had a 4-port 10/100 switch and they also had a 4-port 10/100 hub. With a price difference of around £25 between the two, this needed some careful consideration.

First a brief explanation of the differences between a hub and a switch.

In a Hub, there is a finite amount of bandwidth. Think of it as a pipe of a fixed diameter, along which all the information must flow. PCs connect to this pipe along it's length (via the ports on the hub) and they feed data in and take data out of the pipe. While this works very well, there are a few limitations. Firstly, the pipe can only hold one set of information at a time, so if PC-1 has sent some information for PC-3 then PC-2 will not be able to send (or receive) any information until Pc-1 has finished. This isn't as bad as it sounds because it takes milliseconds for PC-1 to send it's information. If all the computers on a hub are trying to send at t
he same time, what effectvely happens is that each only gets effectively a time-share of the pipe, meaning that none of the attached computers can make full use of the size of the pipe.

A switch is much more effiecient at handling traffic on the network. Instead of having a single pipe, it effectively creates dedicated pipes between each connected PC. So in the same scenario as above, PC-1 could send to PC-3 while PC-2 sent to PC-1, at the same time because the switch creates a dedicated pipe for each conversation. This neatly dispenses with the problems found in a hub and allows each connected PC to send and receive data at it's highest possible speed, without having to share their own pipes with any other PC.

Obviously, a switch is going to be significantly more expensive simply because it is far more complex. But just because it will allow your PCs to communicate faster, doesn't mean that you have to buy one. As you will already have guessed, I opted for the 4-port hub. Bsically, the amount of traffic I expected to use the network was not large enough to warrant the near 60% increase in price between the hub and the switch.

So what about the Netgear hub then? Well for starters, the model I eventually bought is the bargain-basement EN 104 which is only capable of providing 10Mbps connections (as opposed to the 10 or 100Mbps connections supported by the DS104). I chose the (cheaper) 10Mbps only model because I literally don't need anything more. My cablemodem only provides 0.5Mbps of bandwidth so it is a physical impossibility for me to get anywhere near the maximum capacity of the 10Mbps hub.

Physically, the EN 104 is slightly smaller than the DS 104. Measuring a dinky 9cm x 10cm x 2.5cm, it is almost small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. The case is a sturdy steel affair with a "NetGear Blue" paint-job. On the front of the box are the four network ports. Each has two LEDs, one lights up (and stays l
it) when a PC is connected, the other flashes every time the attached computer sends some network traffic. Also on the front is a switch that switches port 4 between 'normal' and 'uplink' mode, with uplink mode allowing you to daisy-chain multiple hubs together. The rear of the unit is home to the socket for the supplied DC adapter. On the base are all the usual labels for serial numbers etc, along with two holes that allow the hub to be wall-mounted on a pair of screws.

Setting up is a doddle. Unpack it, plug it in, attach your PCs and you're off. There are no configuration options, no drivers and not much of an instruction manual. The warranty covers it for 3 years although there's not really much to go wrong.

One thing you will need is a network cable for each of the PCs that you want to attach. These can be sourced from most computer stores these days, any Cat-5 RJ-45 cable will suffice. While this sounds a lot to remember, all it is doing is listing the specification of the cable and the connectors.

Cat-5 refers to the quality of the copper and it's ability to conduct a signal
RJ-45 is the plastic connector at the cable ends which plug into the PC and the Hub.

So in summary, if you need to connect less than 5 PCs together and you don't think you will be making too much use of the network, then the NetGear EN 104 is an ideal choice. If you are slightly worried that it will not provide enough bandwidth then go for the slightly more expensive DS 104 which will support 100Mbps, but you will obviousl need network cards in the PCs that provide 100Mbps in order to get the best out of it. If you are still worried, then you are probably best off going for the FS 105 which is the smallest switch NetGear make.

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