[masraum]

Right. Hubs send all traffic to all ports because they are layer1 and have no knowledge of any addressing. They will also propogate errors across all ports.

I've always wondered about the super cheap switches and how they manage the MAC address table and if they really do only send traffic to the port that it needs to go to the way a switch should or if manufacturers are fudging by calling them a switch. I have assumed that chips and ASICs have gotten so common and cheap that they manage, but for my own use, I prefer a managed switch which also allows me to utilize other features. I am still a bit dubious about unmanaged, super cheap switches.