cat5e laptop-to-laptop?

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Trevor Smith wrote:
> Can I take two computers (laptops both) and plug them together directly 
> from one nic to another with a "standard" ethernet cable? Or do I need a 
> crossover cable or something to do that? And if I have the correct 
> cable, will the two machines do some sort of peer-to-peer networking 
> more or less automagically or will it be difficult to set up? One runs 
> FC2, the other Mac OS X 10.3.7.

You need crossover cable.  You can buy one, or make one.  If you need 
only this one cable, and never will need another cable again in your 
life, it might be cheaper to buy finished one.  If you'd need to make 
another cable or two in foreseable future, it'll be much cheaper to buy 
a box of connectors, 50ft of cable and the tool that you need to attach 
connectors on the end of the cable.  Finished cables are total rip off.

As for as configuration, you'd probably need to assign IP addresses 
manually.

On the Linux side, you can assign address temporary by doing something 
like this:

    # ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

On MacOS X side, you can probably do something similar from shell 
prompt.  Never worked with it, so I wouldn't know really.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7