# Hub A hub can be thought of as a dumb (or legacy) version of a [[Switch]]. **When data comes into a hub, it is forwarded to all (other) connected nodes without any filtering or processing.** Because hubs blindly repeat incoming signals to all (other) connected ports without any filtering or processing, thereby acting like basic signal repeaters, it can be said that they operate on the [[OSI Layer 1 - The Physical Layer|physical layer of the OSI model]]. They do not understand data frames, MAC addresses, or any other higher level concepts. ^nl1msc Hubs used to be popular due to lower costs (compared to switches), and with networking hardware getting cheaper they are hardly ever used today except for network debugging.