having trouble finding 100 mbit hubs

[rosst]

Are there any cheap 10/100 mbit hubs left out there?
I have two applications for 100 mbit hubs.
One is outside our firewall. I want to put an IDS on the net to see what is hitting us. When we finish this net will have 4 nodes, two for the openbsd failover firewalls, one for the providers router, and one for the intrusion detection/sniffer system.
The other application is in my laptop bag. When I'm called to diagnose a network problem it is often handy to connect a hub between the client system and hook up my laptop running ethereal to examine the traffic. It's awkward carring a rack mount programmable switch around.
I asked for two five port hubs from our supplier and received two dlink switches.
After this I went out on the net and found linksys has 10/100 hubs, (efah05w), for sale. I ordered two of these. When I hooked them up I found they were switches. I called linksys and at first was told I was doing something wrong in my configuration. The latest response amounts to "our hub is incompatible with your sniffer, anything else we can help you with"?
There must be some real hubs still out there. Any suggestions?
Thanks.

[Choozo]

Why go for hubs, when switches cost about the same - and do a much better job?

Hubs just relay IP packets to all ports, leaving the machines at the receiving end to sort out the 'mess', while switches route packages to the machine requesting those IP packages.
On a smaller network the overhead won't be that big, but as your net grows ...

[paj12]

Why go for hubs, when switches cost about the same - and do a much better job?
He wants hubs because they allow any machine to see the packets. In a switch, only the sender and recipient can see the packet.

rosst: All I can say is go to a computer store and look around. If it says "hub" on the box, get it. If it turns out to be a switch, get a refund. I think CompUSA has a pretty good selection.

[Choozo]

Originally posted by paj12
He wants hubs because they allow any machine to see the packets. In a switch, only the sender and recipient can see the packet. Dang, ofcourse! :D Should have spent a few more minutes reading that post :p

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Incidentally, Crackmunch still might have a few left in the Hardware Trading forum.

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=134619

I bought one 24-port hub, works great. You guys should hurry, or I might pick up another one or two...

[heckle]

If you alread have a switch, check to see if you can do some port spoofing/redirecting. I know on Cisco switches you can spoof port(s) for IDS or packet capturing purposes.

If nothing else, you shoudl be able to pick up hubs cheap. Try searching at buy.com