is a hub necessary?

I have two desktop machines (one win, one linux) and a win laptop - i want to network these on a high speed ethernet lan.
However next year - there will be another three machines on the network including a linux machine acting as a webserver and proxy to a broadband connection. Do i need a hub for a network like this?

and....

can two hubs be connected together - if i were to get a 4port hub for my network now and then buy another 4 port hub could i connect them ?

Most hubs have a uplink port that can be used to connect to another hub.

Not necessarily and yes.

You can use a whole hell of a lot of nic cards to network, but that eats up PCI slots and isn't practical if you do not have extra nic cards. You also get a performance loss on the computer that is utilizing multiple nics. (or on every computer if you daisy chain with two nics in each computer with ICS)

I have one computer that operates as an ICS (ip packet masquerading in linux) machine. It has two nics with the non-ICS nic connected to a 16 port linksys hub. All computers on the hub can utilize my cable modem with all traffic seeming like it is comping from the ICS IP.

You can daisy chain hubs, but you can cause a considerable amount of collisions if you go too far in. (don't think you will have to worry about that with the quantity you are talking about).

A router is a better bet for ICS (like netgear). You can hook a hub (and other computers) to the router . Then you can connect computers to the hub and this would decrease the likelyhood of collisions.

just bought myseld two 10BaseT PCI Ethernet cards, a 5 port 10MB/s ethernet hub (with lots of led's)

next purchase a pcmcia ethernet card and a router

going to setup a linux box to act as the proxy and firewall.
a 5 way shared internet connection will be nice (especially when i go broadband in about 6 months)

Even hubs that don't have an uplink can be conected if you use a crosover cable instead of a "straight" cable. So you can get one 4 port hub now and later on get another one and you can connect 6 puters to the same network. Although you will get a performance loss when 2 puters on 2 different hubs are talking with eachother.So if you can afford it I would recoment to get an 8 port hub or even better a 8 port switch. I am runing netgears 8 port switches at my work and they work great and they were about 100$.

Any more than one computer on a network and you need a hub,
unless you're going peer to peer, which I assume you aren't.
You can get a simple hub with eight ports that will take care of
all your needs. Each computer hooks into a port on the hub via a
category 5 cable on one end and each respective computer nic
card on the other end. It's pretty cut and dried. Once you
connect everything, then you set the applicable networking
protocols on each computer and enable file sharing permissions.
Each computer must be part of a common workgroup and each computer must have a unique name. After you do that, you have to map each computers drive onto the network. Everything above assumes this will be a simple network with common file sharing
between all the computers. If you want to separate some computers from the others, then you need a router.

rick barclay

a friend and i are moving into a house in september so tere will be three of us. there are 6 desktops and two laptops. Two machines will be linux with apache, php, perl and mysql installed for development purposes. One will act as a gateway between the network and the adsl link (it will be a firewall) Off the second linux box will be a router and a mininetwork including a beos machine.

until then i have a three machine network of a linuix box, a win box and w in laptop

>>>Any more than one computer on a network and you need a hub,
unless you're going peer to peer, which I assume you aren't.

No you don't. kinda... no bite? (still is point to point... but I can think of a couple creative ways for ICS)

Make sure the gateway doesn't have windows or anything made by microsoft. That's just like saying "Come hack my network, I am a stupid retard". Or you can use one of those router/firewall contraptions.

you are getting 5 ips then correct? you do realise you need those other ip adresses unless you get a router and split the connection...

>>>you are getting 5 ips then correct? you do realise you need those other ip adresses unless you get a router and split the connection...

Why?

the gateway will have linux on it, i dont know how we are going to do the connection sharing yet, i dont see why will need a router for it though

You don't


edit... you don't need a physical router, but you do need a computer that will do your IP packet masquerading....

What type of linux?

if you want all 5 boxe4s to be on the net at the same time you will need either 5 ips or a router to split your conection between them... your *nix box can also function as a router...