I was told you might need to read something about this:

http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/networki/hubsswit

What's the Difference Between a Hub and a Switch?


A hub is a "unintelligent" broadcast device -- any packet entering any
port is broadcast out on every port. Hubs do not manage any of the traffic
that comes through their ports. Since every packet is constantly being
sent out through every port, you end up with packet collisions, which
greatly impedes the smooth flow of traffic on your LAN.

A switch, on the other hand, isolates ports -- every received packet is
sent out only to the port on which the target may be found (one caveat -
if the proper port cannot be determined, then the switch will broadcast
the packet to all ports). Essentially, a switch is a router, but one
operating at the MAC level rather than the IP level. Since the switch is
intelligently sending packets only where they need to go, and not
everywhere willy-nilly, the performance speed of your network can be
greatly increased.

So do you need a switch or a hub for your SOHO network? If most of your
traffic involves one -- or even a few -- ports, then there will be little
performance gain achieved by upgrading from a hub to a switch. But if
you've got more than a few machines, then a switch can give you a marked
improvement in performance.

Some links that go into this point a bit further:


http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue42/tag/6.html
http://www.sbdsx.com/page23.html