If you have seen people use terms like hubs, switches, routers, and even gateways interchangeably, you are not alone!

As hardware vendors continue to integrate some of these functionalities into some of their one-box-that-does-it-all units, these things do tend to get a bit confusing once in a while.

Hopefully, the following helps demonstrate the fact that these devices do differ substantially from one another in functionality.

• Wireless Gateways: A gateway is a node on a network that provides an entrance to another network. Often it is a Computer, a Proxy server, a Firewall, or a Router that routes the data traffic from one node/subnet to a different/remote network. Gateways are often configured -for example, when used to connect two regional office networks of a large corporation -to serve as entry points to two or more disjoint networks. In a typical wireless network (WLAN) setup at your hotel, a gateway could be your DSL or Cable ISP interface that links your local network to the Internet.
  
• Hubs: Hubs provide the least sophisticated way of connecting various devices attached to your network. A hub broadcasts every data frame to every one of its ports. It has no way of knowing which port a data frame should be sent to, so it sends it out to all of its ports. The unnecessary traffic overhead so caused usually leads to poor network response times. Considering that it must also share the bandwidth with each and every one of its ports, the overall network performance often degrades considerably.
  
• Switches: A switch maintains a record of the MAC addresses of every device attached to its ports, and uses that information to decide which port a given data-frame must get sent to. As a result, a switch usually provides better network response times than what would have been possible using a hub. It also allocates the full bandwidth to each of its ports, thereby making it a much better choice then a simple hub.