First off, what kind of Internet connection do you have, cable or DSL? This can have an impact on how you can share your connection, and what equipment is best for that purpose.
Second, did you get a hub or a switch? A hub is a "dumb" device, that simply connects all its ethernet jacks together, while a switch is an intelligent device that sends the data only to the appropriate destination port. This is very important when you're sharing something more than just a printer or a few files, since by nature, a hub will become less and less effective as your traffic increases. The price difference between the two has gone down so low that it's usually trivial.
A more secure and better managed way to connect a number of computers to share an Internet connection is through a "cable/DSL router." These devices are inexpensive (even 8-port routers are becoming very reasonably priced), and provide all the switching functions of a LAN switch, while adding the features needed to allow all of your networked computers to share the Internet connection transparently. Such a router is especially useful with a DSL connection, which requires a username/password logon to establish the connection.
If you simply have all your computers hooked up to a "split up" Internet connection, they are all vulnerable to attacks from the outside. Using a router helps protect you through adding an intermediate device, which is all that is visible from the outside.
As for sharing files from one computer to another, that's a simple matter of enabling file sharing on each computer.
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