A switch would probably be the way to go in your situation...
 
It's too bad the Cable company know you have two machines hanging off your connection... You could have saved yourself a bit of money by only having one IP and using a router (which in most cases include a switch) which would allow you to share the one IP between the two machines and have a hardware firewall protecting the whole network as opposed to having to run a software firewall on both machines.
 
That might still be a possibillity but the Cable company might suspect somethings up when you decide to give up the second IP...

Thx for your replay..i got the switch yesterday..webpages and shared files seem to be somewhat quicker..but i still have the problem of when one machine is doing something bandwidth intensive.the other machine laggs badly..i thought the whole idea of a switch was to distribute the bandwidth equally among the 2..

Switches don't help in your case, since the incoming bandwidth is probably 1.5Mbps or less and the switch you bought is probably at least 10Mbps per port (more like 100Mbps), and the hub was already a 10/100 unit that could share such low requirements anyway. Also, switches tend to have a little higher ping when there is low utilization than hubs in the first place, so your ping issue wouldn't be addressed in the first place (unless it's a high dollar unit).

Make sure your network cards are set to full duplex. That means that the netcards will be able to send and receive data at the same time.

The advantage of a switch over a hub is that on a switch each port has the max amount of bandwidth allowed, i.e. a 8 port 10/100 switch has 8 ports that transfer data at 100mb each. Also a switch has the ability to go full duplex at a transfer rate of 200 mb for each port.
 
A hub shares the bandwidth with all the ports, i.e a 8 port 10/100 hub would share the same bandwidth of 100 mb across the entire hub. That is just a little over 12 mbs for each port.
 
As for ATT they suck. I would not listen to a word they say. I have gone left and right over my connection and it stil does not have the same speed that it had when I first got it hooked up. I went from about 2mb to 875k speed in a 5 month period. I have complained to them and they gave me a bunch of BS. ATT will not use dynamic routing and they send you to jam packed routers and this drops your connection. The only reason that I am still on ATT is because where I live the only option I have is 56k or ISDN. DSL is not here yet but I understand that it will be here in the next year. ATT has the monoploy in this area for high speed access and controls it with a iron fist. They are a bunch of network nazis if you ask me.

uboofer,you hit the nail on the head..i told the sap its because they capped me so freakin tight..i went from 6-7 mb downs and 5xx k up(actual upload speeds showed 120k in browser)down to 1.5 and 129k thats when i started having the problems i am now..i can get dsl.but i dont know if it will be any faster,altho i live only like 2 city blocks away from swicth station...
 
 
but your right,they rule the bandwidth..and are tighter than dicks hatban

You know what else sucks. ATT also quit supporting M$ Frontpage. How can they just decide to quit supporting one of the most popular website editors? I have confronted this with them and they just blew me off. Once DSL is in my area I will be moving to DSL.

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How can they just decide to quit supporting one of the most popular website editors?

Maybe they're doing it for the greater good... Frontpage blows goats and the web will be much better off if everyone quit using it.

I imagine that they just canned support for FrontPage server extensions, and that only kills some of the more "enhanced" features (like subweb creation/management, and simplified publishing) and would drop the support of some of the drag and drop gizmos that FPSE supports (like the included hitcounter). I would just say use the FTP function in FrontPage, and if the servers are still NT-based then just write the code a lot of the plugin stuff in ASP (or ASP.NET if supported).

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Frontpage blows goats and the web will be much better off if everyone quit using it. Why? It could be worse, @ least it's not made by Adobe. Now GoLive, there's a prog that knows how to really satisfy your average affection-starved goat!

GoLive 5 is much better than any of the FP versions I have used (FP98-XP). Plus it didn't "help" me with my ASP coding, which would rather nice.

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Why? It could be worse, @ least it's not made by Adobe. Now GoLive, there's a prog that knows how to really satisfy your average affection-starved goat!

Have you ever seen the code FrontPage produces? It can barely be called HTML...

It's gotten better, but there is still a bit too much hand-holding with it. It's fine for what it is though; an entry level editor.

FrontPage does exactly what it says on the tin.
It is a basic drag & drop application that allows the most novice of person to thrown together a nice looking web site.
It contains familiar looking buttons, as they follow on from the likes of Word & Excel.
 
The end resulting HTML is absolutely fine, well the stuff generated from FP 2000 & XP is and in the majority cases does not require FrontPage extensions to actually be installed, it's pretty basic HTML.
 
I'm sorry but not all of us have the time to become "notepad" web designers.
Considering FP XP is about £90 and the likes of Dream Weaver are £300 it is one of the cheapest and one of the easiest to get to grips with.

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Have you ever seen the code FrontPage produces? It can barely be called HTML... I'm not exactly a black-belt in html-fu, I prefer something GUI based with the option to do minor HTML tweaks as & when needed, but I have noticed some oddities in FPXP-prodiced html - though I think you're exagerating a tad when you say it's hardly recognisable.