Well That explains the need for the crossover switch to be turned on on the hub, I had a straight thru cable connecting thought that the straight thru setting would work that was a lucky fix..

I did the short cable thing to make sure I was not doing the wrong thing and the short hookup worked great. the longest run is no more than 100ft so that shouldn't be an issue. I'll check everything again but I could not have wired 6 connections wrong and they all end up with a blinking activity/link light as opposed to a no light which would mean dead