>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Owlett <rowl...@cloud85.net> writes:
Richard> I suspect what I'm looking for is ONE 3 ft piece of terminated Richard> Cat6 cable ;) I have two laptops - one (a Lenovo T43) speaks Richard> only WinXP Pro, the other (a Lenovo T430) only Debian Jessie. You do *not* need a crossover cable. The T430 *certainly* (as in no doubt whatsoever) does auto-discovery of rx and tx. You will, however, need non-colliding IP addresses before TCP or UDP connections between the two computers will work. Most distributions will come with ethernet expecting dynamic configuration using DHCP. This is typically provided using a wireless router or some-such device. Since you reject that solution, the most direct thing to do is to assign static IP addresses using whatever mechanism is well adapted to your distribution. On debian, this is probably /etc/network/interfaces. The addresses should be something like 192.168.1.n/24 and 192.168.1.m/24, respectively, where n and m are positive integers, n is not equal to m, and n<255 and m<255. The netmask for a /24 network is 255.255.255.0. The /etc/network/interfaces stanza would look like this: auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.1.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 where in this case n = 2. Then, say: "ifup eth0" and then check the configuration with "ip a" or "ifconfig -a". Good luck! -- Russell Senior, President russ...@personaltelco.net _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug