Routers and network switches aren't the same hardware—depending on your setup, you may need both.

Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City. After graduating from Duke University, she spent several years reporting on the federal workforce for Government Executive, a publication of ...

When it comes to complexity of network connectors, you have got multiple levels, with a switch (hub) at the bottom and a router at the top. A hub is an astonishingly dumb gadget. It accepts a packet ...

Trisha Jandoc was an associate writer at CNET covering broadband and everything related to home internet. She graduated from St. John's University with a bachelor's degree in journalism and a focus on ...

Do you like fiddling with computers and fancy the idea of taking on a more advanced project? Then I have a suggestion: Build your own router/firewall. With a router running a more advanced operating ...

Even experienced users can fall prey to these networking slips ...

I need to build a mesh network that has two different routers as the hardwire routers and 2 routers as the extender routers. I have read that the google mesh network only allows one hardwired router, ...

After a relatively sluggish year, multiple segments of the switch and router networking markets are due for a solid year of growth. Data center switches, in particular, are set for an AI-driven climb.

The set up is a little weird. I won't get into why, but the PCs are spread all over the house and the switch and router are not physically anywhere near each other. I have run a lot of cat 5e and cat ...