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If you want to know about Bridges, Switches and Routers, see this page. How does a hub work? Go here to find out.
Cable modems are 10mbps only devices (at least right now). If you try to connect them to a 100mbps-only hub, you will not get a connection from the cable modem. If you're trying to setup your network to use the Multiple IP option, then you're going to need either a 10mpbs hub or 10/100mbps hub. If you get a 10/100mbps hub, you need to pay attention to a few details. Check the hub's documentation to see how it handles switching between 10 and 100mbps. Most all of the 10/100mbps hubs automatically sense the speed of the connection into their port. However, some hubs set all ports to 10mbps if only one port is running at 10mbps. If this is what your hub does, then you get no speed advantage from using 10/100mbps Network Interface cards (NICs) in the computers connected to the hub. You might as well save the money and use the less expensive 10mbps NICs. Other, newer, hubs autosense and set the speed of each port individually, so you can theoretically run at 10mbps when using the cable modem and 100mbps computer to computer. But before you get too excited about a blazing-fast, adaptive-speed network, read your NIC and hub documentation carefully to be sure that's the way it will work. Finally, pay attention if you set up your network using one of the many network starter kits that are available. In order to keep the price point of the kits low and WOW-factor high, they may bundle 10/100mbps NICS with a 100mbps-only hub. This works fine if you are just setting up a LAN with no cable modem connection, but it won't work with a cable modem plugged into the hub (for a multiple IP setup). You'll need a 10/100mbps hub to get this setup to work. Of course, if you are using two NICs in the computer connected to the cable modem, then
a 100mbps-only hub will work just fine, as long as all the NICs plugged into the hub are
10/100mbps.
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