A switch is a device in a computer network that electrically and logically connects together other devices. Multiple data cables are plugged into a switch to enable communication between different networked devices. Switches manage the flow of data across a network by transmitting a received network packet only to the one or more devices for which the packet is intended. Each networked device connected to a switch can be identified by its network address, allowing the switch to regulate the flow of traffic. This maximizes the security and efficiency of the network. When a repeater hub is replaced with an Ethernet switch, the single large collision domain used by the hub is split up into smaller ones, reducing or eliminating the possibility and scope of collisions and, as a result, increasing the potential throughput. Because broadcasts are still being forwarded to all connected devices, the newly formed network segment continues to be a broadcast domain. A switch is more intelligent than a repeater hub, which simply retransmits packets out of every port of the hub excepting the port on which the packet was received, unable to distinguish different recipients, and achieving an overall lower network efficiency
