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connecting two computers with straight cat5e, is this possible at all?

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see if this answer or this one answers your question... – quack quixote Jun 8 '10 at 13:36
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up vote 7 down vote

Some computers have autosensing capability and would switch the orientation themselves. But most computers wont do it, sorry.

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this is called Auto-MDIX. – quack quixote Jun 8 '10 at 13:40
Thanks. I was too lazy to research the name. – Posipiet Jun 8 '10 at 13:43
Lots of useful info in quack's link - i.e. its only in the Gigabit standard and if you connect 2 together you will get a switching loop. You may want to expand your answer. – Shevek Jun 8 '10 at 13:45
if it is HP only tech probably most ethernet cards do not have it. thanks for the link. – Infestor Jun 8 '10 at 13:58
If both computers are reasonable modern Macs (last three years or so) this will work out of the box with a normal cable. – Hay Nov 7 '10 at 17:05
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up vote 1 down vote

If it's a modern computer (w/Gigabit), then it will work just fine. Otherwise, probably not. Older switches/hubs sometimes had autodetect for cable type, but NICs typically did not (I can't think of any that did right now).

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as i tried out between gigabit and megabit ethernet machines non crossover cable just works fine! wow, how come no one explicitly told this?! – Infestor Jun 24 '10 at 22:27
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