Let's look more closely at the types of components that are available and the cost and performance issues associated with each. Your hub is the backbone of your network, distributing traffic among all the connected computers. Hubs cost anywhere between about fifty dollars on up to many thousands of dollars, depending on features such as type, speed, number of ports, and whether the hub has diagnostic capabilities. There are two basic types of hubs-active and passive. Passive hubs, which connect two or more PCs, are cheaper.
Active hubs regenerate the inbound signal and pass that signal between all of the attached PCs.
They also monitor collisions, which are caused when two PCs try to send a packet of information across the network at the same time. Because collisions destroy both packets, they must be regenerated. Active hubs can tell the PCs on the network that there has been a collision, so that they may resend their packet. All cards will run in 10 Mbps mode. However, you can't connect a 10 Mbps card to a 100 Mbps hub.