Crossover Cables and Direct Connections

I am not sure that many people think about how to hook up two computers together directly. Back in the day, this was very popular because it was rare that people had internal Switches and Routers to handle their internal networks connections. But the time of creating custom null serial cables and ring topographies, you could hook four machines up, load up Doom 2, and geek out until the sun came up on this revolutionary technology. When ethernet came out, crossover cables became the way that you could hook up two computers without a router, switch, or a hub.

We are way past that. First of all, the modems we either lease or buy through our ISP’s come already integrated with a router and even a wireless router, so that we can easily connect multiple devices. Second, many normal households have way more than two machines to connect to a network, so the need for a single computer to computer connection, even a computer to computer with a bridged internet connection seems to not fit the circumstances.

There are still battles and challenges that we face on a day to day basis, and that involves sharing information to private sources, on private networks, in a completely secured manner. To do that, we can use direct cable connections. But today, crossover cables are a thing of the past. Our network interface cards can pick up and determine if we are connecting to a “computer” or a “network” automatically. So, do you need to transfer files privately and securely to another machine, literally hook up a CAT-5e or CAT-6 cable and I bet, your NIC (Network Interface Cards) will work perfectly. Configure your networks to “Home” or “Work” and they will share their resources.

There are many additional applications to this practice. But, as always, I have a video for you.

Sometimes good information comes at an expense, therefore I am blaming this video. If you are interested in crossovers, check this out. I really have to get into creating these videos. The content of the video is good, so if you can bare to sit down and listen to this in the background, I know that you will get a lot out of it. That is, that you are nerdy enough to be reading this blog. Ha, enjoy!! Not to mention the abrupt end.