I am not sure if I understand your question.
A router is like a telpehone central
office exchange. Each PC (on a net)
has to have a NIC (network interface card)
These can be ISA, PCI, integrateed, PCMIA
(or whatever you call the little plug in cards
that laptops use), or USB.
Each PC has a ethernet cable, today most
look like a telephone jack on steroids, but,
in the "good old days" we used 50 thinnet
with BNCs and I have even seen some odd IBM 2
pin coax. But almost everything today is either CAT5
or fibre optics.
You hub has one port called "uplink", (different terms
are used) that connects to your Cable/DSL or real world
ethernet port. My Ntegear T10 has 8 femal connectors.
One has a switch to allow it to function as a normal
prot, or an uplink port.
Say I have four PCs and a cable box, I don't we only have
2 and a use56K dialup, you will run one cable to each
PCs NIC device, in this case your USB adaptor. Then the
uplink port will go to the cable modem.
But each PC has to have it's own NIC.
An each will have to have a unique TCP/IP assigned.
Some hubs, modems are smart and use DHCP.
Others you will have to assign "static" numbers.
This will at least get you pointed in the right direction.
In a realy bad evil situation, you mihgt have to have
1 PCwith 2 NICs to act as a bridge. I don't know how far
hubs and cable modems have come in the last few years,
but when I helped a friend set his up 3 years ago, he had to
go the ugly route.
Wireless systems face similar issues. All PCs must have
a unique TCP/IP address. This is perhaps the single most
important thing to learn. I learned the hard way at 3:00Am the
hard way. We have one modem and use "network connecton
sharing" to allow that. It was a major PITA to set up.
I am assuming that you are using TCP/IP and not "netbui" or
Novel.
Terry