On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 10:33:28 (+0000), Andy Smith wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 05:27:13PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > The WinXP machine no longer reported a disconnected cable.
> > The Jessie Mate machine now reported it was attempting to establish a
> > connection.
> >
> > IOW both machines recognized a PHYSICAL connection.
> > *NOTHING MORE*
>
> >From what I can gather of the thread, both of your machines have
> gigabit interfaces. That's good as it means the Auto-MDIX feature is
> virtually guaranteed be supported¹. So, you need not worry whether
> your cable is crossover or not.
>
> All you need to do now is statically configure both machines to be
> in the same IP network. It does not really matter what numbers you
> choose as long as they are valid, but convention dictates that you
> should use one of the private networks as listed in RFC1918:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network
>
> As you are only going to have two machines on this network you could
> a /30. In fact given there won't be a default gateway host you could
> probably get away with a /31. But there is no need to make life
> confusing: you can just use a /24, so your network has use of all of
> the last octet of the address, e.g. 192.168.1.*.
>
> So, let's say you did choose 192.168.1.0/24. Just configure one
> machine as 192.168.1.1 and the other as 192.168.1.2 with a netmask
> on both of 255.255.255.0. If either of them insists on needing a
> default gateway you can just put the IP of the other machine there.
Before I discovered the simplicity of using IPv6, I used IPv4.
I just dug out a backup of a configuration file from that time,
/etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.19
netmask 255.255.255.255
pointopoint 192.168.1.15
#
The other end had its 19 and 15 switched, naturally.
Cheers,
David.
