Do you have a direct crossover cable that you can test? I am wondering - the empeg can only support 10Mbps. If your hub is having trouble stepping down the speed, or performing an autonegotiation for your computer at 100Mbps, this might be part of the problem. Some manufacturers (I don't know about D-link) have a really hard time doing this well...

Try a direct crossover cable, and see what your LAN card and hub ports are set for speed / duplex / negotiation.