Originally posted by patrick
My friend has a standard hub, two computers and a cable modem.
With the cable modem plugged into the hub, both computers can access the internet but cannot be networked together. This is due to the fact that both computers have only one network card and therfore they have only 1 IP address each. Automatically assigned by the ISP, both computers use identical IP addresses so they can connect to the internet on the accepted IP. Unfortunately, having the same IP prevents the machines from recognising each other as a network. (Though he can always pull out cable, change the IPs and network as usuall without the internet).