What's the difference between a Hub, a Switch and a Router?

In a word: intelligence.

Hubs, switches, and routers are all devices that let you connect one or more computers to other computers, networked devices,s;lda or to other networks. Each has two or more connectors called ports into which you plug in the cables to make the connection. Varying degrees of magic happen inside the device, and therein lies the difference. I often see the terms misused so let's clarify what each one really means.

A hub is typically the least expensive, least intelligent, and least complicated of the three. Its job is very simple: anything that comes in one port is sent out to the others. That's it. Every computer connected to the hub "sees" everything that every other computer on the hub sees. The hub itself is blissfully ignorant of the data being transmitted. For years, simple hubs have been quick and easy ways to connect computers in small networks.

A switch does essentially what a hub does but more efficiently. By paying attention to the traffic that comes across it, it can "learn" where particular addresses are. For example, if it sees traffic from machine A coming in on port 2, it now knows that machine A is connected to that port and that traffic to machine A needs to only be sent to that port and not any of the others. The net result of using a switch over a hub is that most of the network traffic only goes where it needs to rather than to every port. On busy networks this can make the network significantly faster.

A router is the smartest and most complicated of the bunch. Routers come in all shapes and sizes from the small four-port broadband routers that are very popular right now to the large industrial strength devices that drive the internet itself. A simple way to think of a router is as a computer that can be programmed to understand, possibly manipulate, and route the data its being asked to handle. For example, broadband routers include the ability to "hide" computers behind a type of firewall which involves slightly modifying the packets of network traffic as they traverse the device. All routers include some kind of user interface for configuring how the router will treat traffic. The really large routers include the equivalent of a full-blown programming language to describe how they should operate as well as the ability to communicate with other routers to describe or determine the best way to get network traffic from point A to point B.

A quick note on one other thing that you'll often see mentioned with these devices and that's network speed. Most devices now are capable of both 10mps (10 mega-bits, or million bits, per second) as well as 100mbs and will automatically detect the speed. If the device is labeled with only one speed then it will only be able to communicate with devices that also support that speed. 1000mbs or "gigabit" devices are starting to slowly become more common as well. Similarly many devices now also include 802.11b or 802.11g wireless transmitters that simply act like additional ports to the device.

Summary: Hubs, switches and routers are all computer networking devices with varying capabilities. Unfortunately the terms are also often misused.

How to Completely Erase a Hard Disk Drive

A new year has begun and perhaps you have decided to perform a system upgrade or get rid of your old computer system and purchase a new one.But before you sell or donate your old computer, it is very much necessary to completely erase your Hard Disk Drive.Yes, every one of us are aware of this fact and so, we delete the contents of the hard disk either by using the DELETE key on our keyboard or by Formatting the hard disk.
Deleting and Formatting – Just Not Secure Enough
But the fact is, the data will still be on the hard disk even after deleting it or formatting the hard disk. Using the delete key on your keyboard will only remove the shortcuts to the files making them invisible to users. Deleted files still reside on the hard drive and a quick Google search will show many options for system recovery software will allow anyone to reinstate that data.
Formatting the hard drive is a bit more secure way to erase the hard disk. Formatting a disk will not erase the data on the disk, only the address tables. It makes it much more difficult to recover the files. However a computer specialist would be able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk before the reformat. For those who accidentally reformat a hard disk, being able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk is a good thing. However, if you’re preparing a system for retirement to charity or any other organization, this obviously makes you more vulnerable to data theft.
Erasing the Hard Disk through DISK WIPING
So it is necessary for us to use a 100% secure way to erase the hard disk.The secure way of erasing the hard disk is called Disk Wiping.Disk wiping is a secure method of ensuring that data, including company and individually licensed software on your computer and storage devices is irrecoverably deleted before recycling or donating the equipment. Because previously stored data can be brought back with the right software and applications, the disk wiping process will actually overwrite your entire hard drive with data, several times. Once you format you’ll find it all but impossible to retrieve the data which was on the drive before the overwrite. The more times the disk is overwritten and formatted the more secure the disk wipe is.
There are a variety of disk wiping products available that you can purchase, or freely downloaded online to perform more secure disk wipes.One of my favorite disk wiping software is
WipeDrive/ WipeDrive Professional
You have to use this tool by burning the iso image file onto a CD or by using a floppy disk.After burning this tool you have to boot your PC and follow the screen instructions to completely erase the hard disk.

Top 5 Ways to Speed Up Your PC

5 Ways to Speed Up PC

Are you fed up with your slow PC? Well you can Speed Up your PC by 3 times. In this post you’ll find some of the most significant ways to speed up your PC. For your convenience, I ’ll split this post into 2 parts.
1. Automatic Ways to Speed Up PC (Using PC Speed Up Software's)
2. Manual Ways to Speed Up PC

Automatic Ways to Speed Up PC
You can use a PC Optimizer Tool to automatically boost the Speed of your PC without the need to worry about the manual ways of doing it. These tools will automatically find and fix upto 99% of your PC errors by optimizing the Windows registry, cleaning up junk files, removing unwanted items from the start up etc. This can speed up your PC and Internet speed by upto 3 times. Here are some of the best PC Optimizer Programs that I recommend.
1. Perfect Optimizer
2. Registry Easy
Using a PC Optimizer is the easiest way to speed up your PC. This is because, most of the performance tweaks such as Registry Cleanup cannot be done manually.

Manual Ways to Speed Up Your PC
1. Free Up Disk Space to increase the speed of your PC
* Remove temporary Internet files.
* Empty the Recycle Bin.
* Remove Windows temporary files.
* Uninstall Programs that you no longer use.
2. Periodically Perform Hard Disk Defragment. This can Speed Up your PC significantly.
3. Clean Up your Registry (Highly Recommended)
Cleaning Up your Windows Registry is very much necessary to speed up your PC. Unfortunately you cannot do this manually. You have to use a Registry Cleaner to do this. Here is the best registry cleaner on the web.
Registry Easy
A complete review of registry cleaners can be found at Registry Cleaner Reviews
4. Clean Up the browser cache to Speed Up your Internet.
5. Install a good Antispyware software
Spywares can really hurt the performance of your PC. So, install a good Antispyware to protect your PC from Spywares and improve the speed of your PC. I recommend the following Antispyware to protect your PC.
1. Spyware Cease
2. SUPER Antispyware™
Which is the Best Way to Speed Up my PC? (Auto or Manual)
The best way to speed Up your PC is by using a PC Optimizer such as Perfect Optimizer or Registry Easy. This is because, manual ways can only perform 30-40% of the tweaks to improve the speed of your PC, but the most important aspect of the Speed Up process such as Registry clean Up and other advanced performance tweaks can only be done using a PC Optimizer software. So if you are serious about improving the speed of your PC, then you need to use a PC Optimizer.