Passive or Active Hubs?

That's probably not a topic for this forum. These hubs are a commodity, lots of different manufacturers. Just go to your nearest computer dealer, they will have some hub for you, shouldn't cost you more than about 20 €/$ (wild guess, and I don't know of any special properties you should look for except that it has its own power supply).

(Well, I did give you an answer, no reason to be unfriendly.)

"THis is a topic for this forum."

I agree with you Regina, I think this is an excellent question when you consider that a lot of people are having problems with their USB based equipment because they are using the wrong hub. I feel your frustration. First let me give you some definitions so that we are on the same page. Being 'passive' or 'active' applies to both USB hubs and crossovers. The passive style is basically a place where you can tap into the signal. The problem is that once you tap into it enough times, the signal quality starts to degrade. Hence the problems with passive equipment. Passive equipment is always less expensive than its active counterpoint. This is because the active equipment has more circuitry involved, as well as a separate power supply. It could be a 10 port USB active hub with all ports being used, and each and every one of them will receive the proper voltage and signal, just as if they were plugged directly into the computer. You should also be looking at high speed hubs rated at 2.0, not 1.1. The only USB active USB hub that I can't wholeheartedly recommend is this Belkin:

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?MerchantId=&Section_Id=200433&pcount=&ProductId=158910

The reason is they tend to have a design flaw and overheat easily.

I did a search for you Regina and here are a couple of good quality active hubs. The IOGear is probably the best of the lot. You can find them all at Newegg.com.

http://www.iogear.com/main.php?loc=product&Item=GUH227

http://www.trendnet.com/products/TFU-430.htm

http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?event=viewProduct&localeCode=EN_USA&pid=1466


This active hub is especially nice because it also includes a few added Firewire ports, which will help prevent needing to run out and buy a hub just for Firewire at a later date.

http://www.iogear.com/main.php?loc=product&Item=GUH420

I will probably get rid of one of our Belkin hubs, and replace it with this active hub. I seems to solve a lot of problems. Hope that helps. Don't forget to click on the ' helpful/solved' points. We are saving up so we can buy a pair of American Idol ear plugs...

I'm sensing some frustration...

: )

"Don't forget to click on the 'helpful/solved' points. We are saving up so we can buy a pair of American Idol ear plugs... "

Priceless, MyMac.

Comedy is always a welcome thing.

"Comedy is always a welcome thing."

Except when we get it from a mirror 😝

Thank you Regina, I truly appreciate the kind words and being able to get a star for the day 🙂 Regarding what you said about "I never knew that passive hubs degrade after time." that is not what I meant. Please don't misunderstand. The hub itself does not degrade, its the signal passing through it which gets degraded. It could be a brand new passive hub, and the signal would still get degraded. They're actually designed to work this way. So why would anyone buy one? Simple, most people don't know that the signal is getting degraded, and they cost half as much as a good passive hub. For most people the price is all they need to see to choose the passive variety. By the way, there is a third kind of hub also. They are basically USB extenders. You don't connect them with standard USB cable, you use Cat5 cable. You can then run a USB device off of your computer over 150 feet away from it. I'm sure soon that someone will come out with a wireless version.

AAAAH!! My reflection!

MyMac, Thanks for the hub information - How can you tell if a hub is passive or active? I checked out all the links that you gave Regina and it doesn't say anywhere that it is an active hub. Also, is there any reason you recommend the iogear USB&Firewire hub over the 2nd one down by Trendware?

Hi Tansef. Ordinarily if it has its own power supply it's active. The ads won't say it's active or passive. That's more of a technical term.

"s there any reason you recommend the iogear USB&Firewire hub over the 2nd one down by Trendware?"

They are all good units from what I could see. I chose the Firewire unit because I need a few more Firewire ports and it would keep me from having to buy a second Firewire hub. It's really more personal preference than anything 🙂