Networking Mac's

I've been lazy over the last few months trying to figure out how to get answers to this question!
I'm moving into a new house and I want to have more then one mac in the house thus I want them networked. I'd like to only have once internet
connection thus one modem or dedicated line for the internet. I know you can have a host computer for the internet and then have other computers
on the network access the network thus accessing the host computer (i.e. in turn the internet). I plan on using Ethernet 10/100 ... my question is
what do I need and how do I do it?

I"m assuming there must be special software for things like this and I'll need a 56K modem or whatever with two compuers with cards in them but
will I need an ethernet hub?

Can anyone give me some clues?