Ethernet networking at college.

Hey. Normally at school my laptop is connected to an ethernet jack in the dorm directly with a cable, but for reasons very complicated I'm going to be working off two laptops this semester. Being able to network these two to the internet with a hub/router (I'm not sure of terminology here, pardon my ignorance) would be the simplest solution to this, but I cannot find out for the life of me if any of these would allow me to connect via the ethernet cable. Is that possible with this sort of hardware? I'd hate to spend money on something that I can't use, is all. Thanks in advance.