Cable Distance

it is better to have home runs to each computer if you can but if not you can have two home runs that go to two hubs this way it allows you to spread out the bandwith i.e. 100mb hub div by five computers would give you 20mb per workstation verses 100mb div 10 computers gives you 10mb per computer this will also cut down on collisions

better yet get a switch that will really cut down on collions

Your best bet is to get a switch ( pricier than hubs for obvious data transfer rates reasons) and route all your machines to the switch, your switch to your server.

Using the hubs for the client machines can slow data transfer. We do it here occassionally when we're without an additional port and are very slective about where we do it based on usage.

There are questions to be answered here.

Sure you can by an affordable switch for around 500.00 or so dollars, but what is the requirement of the 10 machines. Are they web surfers, email checkers, MS Office users, big attachments ??? I have about 40 users going through 3 10/100 hubs. There biggest problem is getting big (8 Meg)Power-Point slide attachments that some smo has attached to his email and sent to 30 of them. So for them the hubs work fine. On the other side of my network I have 30 or so developers. They are writing a distributed software package that requires multicast and high bandwidth. This requires bigger guns.

.02,
warmongr

If the place has already been wired, and the runs are going into the location where you have the server, you should be good to go. Hopefully, they put modular receptacles at the ends of the runs for you.
200 ft is well within the range of UTP cabling so you have no worries if the guy did a decent job at it.
As far as putting a switch in the picture, I think it might be overkill if you've only got 10 computers on the network. If I had to watch my dollars, I'd forgo the switch unless I was really having bandwidth problems. I agree with the guy that says you need to look at how your users are accessing the network. If everyone is streaming audio and sending huge powerpoint presentations to each other, you might lean toward a switch. If not, forget it for now.
If you do end up needing a switch, you can it within your server room/closet where its easier to keep an eye on things. With your short cable runs, you have no worries on distance, so no hubs out in the wild are necessary.

Actually its a rather simple network and I think a switch would be overkill. There's no streaming. Users only access email and a mainframe.

I was wanting to know what was more efficient, long cable runs from the users computer to the server, or, short cable runs from the computer to a hub, and then a long cable run from that hub to the server.

It's so much effiency as it's maintainablity. Run short runs to the hub then to the final hub. That way if someone screws up the short run of cable, it's less work to replace it then if it's long run. Even then I would patch it at the workstation and not hard install the cable all the way to the hub from the workstation.

Just my 2 cents ;-)

Mike S
"Diplomacy; the art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock" Wynn Catlin