Connect 2 PC together with a LAN cable

thebluesbrothers

thebluesbrothers

thebluesbrothers

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26 Mar 2021
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Hi all.A question from a beginner. I don't understand why we have to manage Ip (like put a static Ip address) in this process. I tought we were in layer2(mac,lan,ehernet) here and not in the layer3(Ip) of Osi model. Could someone explain me something? Thank you all
 
So long since I did this but it was easy before, you needed a Crossover cable not a Patch cable but newer NIC's do that for you so any cable works and you ran the XP Networking Wizard and it was done for you.
 
You will have established a physical connection between the machines, but the operating system on both PCs doesn't talk to the physical. It talks at the networking layer.

So although in theory the two machines would be able to detect the MAC address of each other with a broadcast that gets sent over the PHY layer, without an IP to deal with... the connection goes nowhere.

If you really want to talk two machines without assigning IPs, you'll need a different network protocol. Which in 2021 us a huge waste of time. Just put an IP on each machine and job... Jobbed!
 
thebluesbrothers said:
Hi all.A question from a beginner. I don't understand why we have to manage Ip (like put a static Ip address) in this process. I tought we were in layer2(mac,lan,ehernet) here and not in the layer3(Ip) of Osi model. Could someone explain me something? Thank you all
Click to expand...

Because you have to get an IP address from somewhere. The two most common routes are fixed or DHCP. On a client PC-client PC link, there is no DHCP server so you have to supply an IP address from somewhere.
 
APIPA should figure it out for you if you're just connecting two relatively modern machines together, but it can't hurt to assign addresses manually.
 
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