Answer Description

Hubs are not common these days and for good reason. Instead of intelligently sending traffic where it needs to go using a MAC address and/or IP address a Hub broadcasts all traffic on all ports. For example if a 48 port Hub receives a packet, it is going to broadcast that packet out on the remaining 47 ports. Generally speaking if you come across a Hub today it should be replaced with a switch instead.

Wikipedia

An Ethernet hub, active hub, network hub, repeater hub, multiport repeater, or simply hub is a network hardware device for connecting multiple Ethernet devices together and making them act as a single network segment. It has multiple input/output (I/O) ports, in which a signal introduced at the input of any port appears at the output of every port except the original incoming. A hub works at the physical layer (layer 1) of the OSI model. A repeater hub also participates in collision detection, forwarding a jam signal to all ports if it detects a collision. In addition to standard 8P8C ("RJ45") ports, some hubs may also come with a BNC or an Attachment Unit Interface (AUI) connector to allow connection to legacy 10BASE2 or 10BASE5 network segments. Hubs are now largely obsolete, having been replaced by network switches except in very old installations or specialized applications. As of 2011, connecting network segments by repeaters or hubs is deprecated by IEEE 802.3.