Active Hubs

Active Hubs

Active hubs incorporate electronic components that can amplify and clean up the electronic signals that flow between devices on the network. This process of cleaning up the signals is called signal regeneration. Signal regeneration has the following benefits:

The network is more robust (less sensitive to errors).
Distances between devices can be increased.

These advantages generally outweigh the fact that active hubs cost considerably more than passive hubs.

Later in this chapter, you learn about repeaters, devices that amplify and regenerate network signals. Because active hubs function in part as repeaters, they occasionally are called multiport repeaters.