does a broadband router forward other hosts rather than the destination?

Question

i and other three roommates share a broadband router, which includes function as a ethernet switch. does this broadband router forward my ip packets to other hosts within the LAN even they are not the destination?

does a broadband router forward my ip packedts to other hosts rather than the destination?

Answer 1

It depends on the router itself. Most routers today contain a 'switch'. A switch will only send the packets to the computer that has the IP address of the final destination. This gets you better throughput because the packets are not being sent to all the computers connected.

Cheaper routers may just contain a 'hub'. A hub will broadcast the packet to all connected computers regardless of IP address. This is the easiest and cheapest thing for a manufacturer to implement, but it can hurt network performance.

You can use a tool like ethereal (http://www.ethereal.com/) to which packets are going by your network card.

You can read more about switches here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_switch

Answer 2

Destination