n Warranty: Hubs are in the process of being phased out. Therefore, it becomes absolutely necessary to check out whether the vendor would continue to offer support services or at least offer an equivalent switch in case the hub has already been phased out.

n Stackable: Some hubs can be connected to other hubs to expand the network so that the combined unit acts like a single hub, even going so far as to be configured as full rack mounts.

n Form Factor: Many hubs have their own special enclosures, while others allow for rack mounting. When possible, even if you don’t have rack-mounted gear now, get hubs that can rack mount later in case you need it.

n Auto-sensing: Dual speed hubs (10/100) can protect investment in legacy equipment, and increase the networking flexibility. There is little price penalty these days from buying auto-sensing hubs and switches, which determine speed on a by-port basis, and they are preferable to single speed hubs.

n SNMP Support: The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) lets a network manager configure a hub remotely, and provides information about the performance of the hub, traffic, errors, and so forth.

The SNMP protocol is based on the manager/agent model where the agent requires minimal software. Most of the processing power and the data storage resides on the management system, while a complementary subset of those functions resides in the managed system. It can therefore be categorized into two components. The Management Information Base (MIB) is a database of object definitions. The definition specifies whether an SNMP manager can monitor the object. The protocol provides functions that enable you to access the data object whose definitions are located in the MIB.

n LED Indicators: These allow the network administrator to monitor all networking activities.