Please Help with Home Network

This question might have been asked by others before but here it goes. Well i have a desktop and a laptop and i wanted to network the two at
home so that two ppl can get online at the same time. I have verison dsl service and i also have a 3com homeconnect hub and i was wondering if its’ possible to have two users on line at the same time on the two different machines? By the way i’m running win200 pro on both computer. I’ve tried everything but it doesn’t seem to work. I’m wondering if i needa router? please understand i don’t want to spend more moneny on getting another i.p. from verison. Any adivice or tip on home networking would be appriciated. Please let me know if it’s possible with my current setup.

thanx everyone