It sounds like this is just for testing/learning, so perhaps you can start by plugging a laptop into that hub, reboot the laptop, and see if you get an address from DHCP. From the command prompt (start | run | cmd), you can do an 'ipconfig /all' to see your network info, if any.
If you get that, then we can walk you through the next steps for the host. Of course, the best thing is to make the request to get an IP address, so we don't cause any conflicts (but those network guys are slooowww!).
BTW, are you doing a fresh build of ESX from scratch?
