I bought four Linksys HUBS for my work a while back, for the express purpose of being able to sniff some traffic. Couldn't do it. Opened a unit, and googled for the chip part number. It was an ethernet switch part number. The chip manufacturer's web site claimed a new breakthrough technology that lowered the price point to the point that their chips could be used instead of simple repeater chips.
Interesting. In my case it's a Linksys which is clearly a hub, not a switch, but it's interesting that the components can be, and are, interchanged quite readily. Maybe my Netgear hub is actually a switch after all. That would certainly make sense with regard to what I'm seeing. -- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003