Yea, unless you want to make some funky bench test cable you will need a hub. But for bench testing, the 4 port hub will work perfectly. It has the 12V hookup that you need to send power to the SSC and simple RJ45 connection for PixelNet in. It also has RJ4's for the outputs but being such a low cost device, I would have no fear making changes to the output connection type if you decide to use a different connection type. With this, simply connect the 12V bench power source you intend to use to the hub, plug in your EtherDongle or PixelNet flashed USB dongle, connect your string(s) to the output port(s) and you are ready for testing with the confidence that if i works here, it will work on the 16 port hub as well.