What does the Uplink feature on a router, hub, or switch do?
10/100 BaseT Ethernet jacks contain two signals, Receive (Rx) and Transmit (Tx), each of which is made up of two twisted-pair wires. An uplink port on a hub, switch, router, or any other network device, is simply an Ethernet port where the Receive and Transmit signals are swapped. This lets the Transmit signal on one device, correctly connect to the Receive connection on the other device (and vice-versa). This allows you to expand the number of ports on your hub, switch, or router.The Uplink feature can be implemented by a dedicated port, shared port, Normal/Uplink switch, or a feature known as auto MDI / MDI-X. This feature, available on some newer devices, automatically figures out how connect with whatever is plugged into it. Very handy, especially for novice networkers! NOTE! On devices with a shared uplink port (usually indicated by some sort of graphic such as a line between the two ports), never plug something into both the normal and shared uplink port at the same time. This wi
