In simplest terms, switches are boxes that are used to connect groups of PCs at a central location via network cabling. But actually, switches are much more than that.

In earlier networking days, networks used "hubs" as the central connection point. Hubs were adequate at that point. But a hub uses a "shared" networking system which, on a standard Ethernet network, divides the bandwidth among all the users connected to it. So if there are 5 computers connected to a 10Mbps hub, and all are using the network at the same time, each of them actually only has the use of 2 Mbps, on the average.

Switches are programmed much more intelligently. A switch provides a direct connection to the network for each user. In other words, each user that is connected to a switch gets the full available bandwidth -- 100 Mbps on a Fast Ethernet network.

In addition, a switch keeps track of each node on the network and remembers the unique network ID of each, so that when it has data to send to one of them, it can send it quickly and efficiently, to only that device, where in a shared network, the data was "broadcast" out to all the nodes, and was ignored by all of them except the one to which it was addressed.

Today switches are available that can handle standard, Fast, and/or Gigabit Ethernet. Many switches feature ports of different network speeds, and can connect network segments of different speeds, or connect two Fast Ethernet segments over a Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connection.

In a word, Switches offer maximum bandwidth and speedy peformance.