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What Should I Do with a 10/100 Ethernet Hub?

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/tmp
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What Should I Do with a 10/100 Ethernet Hub?

#1 Post by /tmp »

My boss and I were cleaning out the server room and came across an HP J3295A Procurve 10/100 24-port Ethernet Hub. I would like to use this in some capacity to help with developing, sharing or exploring Debian GNU/Linux. Does anyone have any idea of how this could benefit the community?
Bookworm | Intel I7-3667U | Apple Macbook Air 5,2 (Mid 2012) (Laptop) | 8 GB RAM | 3rd Gen Intel Core Graphics

kopper
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Re: What Should I Do with a 10/100 Ethernet Hub?

#2 Post by kopper »

I'm not sure what you're asking. Hub is fairly unintelligent and as such, doesn't provide much else than broadcasting all traffic received in one port to all others. Of course the hub configuration allows you to do a bit more, like port monitoring and usage restrictions, speed, etc. But yeah, I think that there is little Debian -related experience to be gained with it. Of course It's a great way to learn a bit more about networking and such.

Google spits out a couple of PDFs with the full device name as search query, which could help you to decide what to use it for.
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Re: What Should I Do with a 10/100 Ethernet Hub?

#3 Post by /tmp »

kopper wrote:I'm not sure what you're asking. Hub is fairly unintelligent and as such, doesn't provide much else than broadcasting all traffic received in one port to all others. Of course the hub configuration allows you to do a bit more, like port monitoring and usage restrictions, speed, etc. But yeah, I think that there is little Debian -related experience to be gained with it. Of course It's a great way to learn a bit more about networking and such.

Google spits out a couple of PDFs with the full device name as search query, which could help you to decide what to use it for.
Thanks :) I'm thinking of just recycling the various PCB parts rather than use it. (I just bought a used server so I could help with development and multimedia work for Debian :) )
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HankB
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Re: What Should I Do with a 10/100 Ethernet Hub?

#4 Post by HankB »

If it's really a hub, it can be useful to use with Wireshark. Wireshark is a tool which can listen to network traffic and record what different devices are sending to each other. You can use it to view the traffic on your network. If you are working with programs or devices which communicate with each other (one of the things I do) then Wireshark is a tool that might interest you.

The problem using it is that network switches normally direct traffic only to the intended target network port. Connect Wireshark to another port and it will not see that traffic. A hub (seemingly less common these days) sends all traffic to all ports. It can be used to 'tap' a line to view traffic on that line. I use an old SMC TigerHub for exactly this purpose.

That's what I would do with the hub. If you have no need to examine network traffic you may have no use for the hub (except as part of your LAN.)

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