A hub, back in the day, 100Mbit to 1Gbit and above. For at least the last 20+ years, a network switch, with as many ports as you want. 8 ports are very common at gigabit level, $20 is commonplace. 2.5Gbit and 10Gbit are falling in price these days, as are the ethernet cards for PCs, as folks want faster LAN and WAN speeds. Top line motherboards these days are coming with 2.5Gbit interfaces, I'm having a new Win11 PC built and its commonplace at the higher end, and the nosebleed levels have 10Gbit. As I move large files around on my 1Gbit network I dream about 10Gbit! Pricing for switches at that level with at least a couple of 10G ports are around $300 or so.
A hub, back in the day, 100Mbit to 1Gbit and above. For at least the last 20+ years, a network switch, with as many ports as you want. 8 ports are very common at gigabit level, $20 is commonplace. 2.5Gbit and 10Gbit are falling in price these days, as are the ethernet cards for PCs, as folks want faster LAN and WAN speeds. Top line motherboards these days are coming with 2.5Gbit interfaces, I'm having a new Win11 PC built and its commonplace at the higher end, and the nosebleed levels have 10Gbit. As I move large files around on my 1Gbit network I dream about 10Gbit! Pricing for switches at that level with at least a couple of 10G ports are around $300 or so.