If you’re on a school network, i may be wrong, but a router wouldn’t even work. A router’s job, unless I am mistaken, is to take an internet connection and allow multiple ocmputers to use it, i.e., making a network out of it. Chaoticdonkey is already on a network. Having been on a school network before, I know you need a hub (for the first semester, the regular ethernet ports in our dorms were busted, we had to use the ethernet supplued over the phone line with a hub attached to share the connection between roommates. Man, that was slow.)
So a hub or switch is what you need. As said, a switch would be better, becuse it appropraites bandwidth better. But either will work, an a hub is cheaper. And you can have both computers on the internet/school network 24/7.
I think you are sort of right but not quite. What you are describing is a cable or ADSL modem combined into the same box as a router. I’ve always understood that a router essentially acts like a gateway between different networks, making each look to the other like a single network node and handling the direction of traffic from one to the other. Mind you, this is based on a half hour segment of a particularly dull three-day course. wikipedia
It’s not a regular USB cable. It has to be specially wired and (IIRC) requires some drivers and transfer software. They usually cost 20-40. A CAT 5 ethernet crossover cable is usually cheaper at around 6-10 , somewhat faster, and less hassle if both PCs have ethernet ports and networking drivers already installed, as most PC do these days.
I’ve seen crossover cables for $5 in stores and even cheaper online.
If the OP has two network cards in his computer, or if he knows someone who has one to spare (they are dirt cheap and computer nerds often have them laying around collecting dust), the cheapest solution would be to run the internet connection in to one NIC, enable ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) on it in Windows, and run the crossover cable from the second NIC to the NIC of the other computer.
What makes you think that crossover cables are limited to six feet? A quick search online will show you plenty of vendors selling 100-foot long crossovers. Ethernet over UTP (unshielded twisted-pair) wiring has a distance limitation of 100 meters. USB is limited to a paltry five meters.
Well, unless you anticipate lugging your desktop all over your dorm, you really don’t need to spend extra money on a wireless network card for it. WAPs (wireless access points) also have ports for a wired network.
In a nutshell, you’ll need to buy a WAP, plug the cable that carries your Internet connection into the WAN port, and plug your desktop into a LAN port. However, due to various configuration and security options, the implementation of this can be significantly more complicated than the previous sentence makes it sound.
Here are some decent articles that cover the basics of both wired and wireless home networking.
Here’s what I ended up doing. Bought a switch and an ethernet cable from tigerdirect. Went to Wal-Mart, got a hub from them, and an ethernet cable. I transferred all my files with AIM (it went pretty quickly, as it was getting more than 6 megs/sec.) When new switch and cable come in, I’ll take the hub and cable back to wal-mart.
Yea, but I meant like: suppose you have 20Gb of files on your computer, that you need to copy to another computer a block away, or across town…
Also the one time I had to do it, I could not get two XP computers to share behind a router unless NAT was disabled. And if you disable NAT, it’s wise to just disconnect the actual internet-cable for the duration.
Also, as far as crossover cables, where I live, every local place charges horribly for them, $15-$20 or more, just for a little 6-footer. Yes you can make one but that requires a crimping tool that costs even more. Online they are far cheaper, in the <$5 range.
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