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I have 2 computers next to each other that both have wireless devices to connect to a wireless router/modem in the house.
But I want to have a wired connection between these computers using a crossover network cable.
Is it possible to have a crossover connection plus the wireless connections going at the same time?
I am using XP on both computers.
Craig Johnston
Posted 2010-09-23T01:32:52.680
Reputation: 21
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By doing this, all that will happen is that file transfers from machine to machine will run a lot faster, however, if you only do the occasional transfer/print etc, there is very little reason to actually do this.
FYI - edit to be clearer.
If Wired is 100Mb and Wireless is 54Mb, you will be going at the wired 100Mb speed, not combined at 154Mb, it is not possible to team a wired and wireless card - sorry if this was not clear.
William Hilsum
Posted 2010-09-23T01:32:52.680
Reputation: 111 572
How do I tell the computers to use the crossover cable and not the wireless network? – Craig Johnston – 2010-09-23T01:55:13.740
Any wired connection will get a lower interface metric than wireless, if there is a valid route, it will take preference over a wireless network. – William Hilsum – 2010-09-23T01:57:14.377
@Wil ... How does this increase speed? I thought all it did was pick and chose between either the wired connection or the wireless and not utilize the two? – James Mertz – 2010-09-23T01:58:13.393
@KronoS If wireless is 54Mb and Wired is 100Mb, the obviously it will send at 100Mb - not talking about using them together.... I can see how my answer may look, I will make it clearer. – William Hilsum – 2010-09-23T02:01:18.650
I agree with Wil... Just use the wired connection, there is not need for the wireless connection. – James Mertz – 2010-09-23T02:05:19.710
@KronoS - well, the question says it is a wireless router/modem... the machines will loose internet without it! Personally I would use ethernet from each laptop to the router if it is practical and skip the wireless all together. – William Hilsum – 2010-09-23T02:07:26.993
@Wil or he can share the wireless access to the other pc... I'm just wondering if there won't be collisions or dupes of packets when connected to both at same time. – James Mertz – 2010-09-23T02:27:59.173
@Will: how do I stop the crossover cable connection assigning the computer a different IP address? – Craig Johnston – 2010-09-23T03:17:57.140
It should assign a different IP to each connection. Your wireless IP wont change (unless youre running DHCP) – AkkA – 2010-09-23T03:27:36.933
@AkkA: the wireless router DHCP is assigning the wireless connection. How can each connection have a different IP? What is the IP of each machine then? I thought each machine can only have one IP. – Craig Johnston – 2010-09-23T03:30:10.747
@Craig Johnston - Every interface has one or more (depending on OS restrictions) IP addresses. Wireless will assign one, by putting in the crossover cable, each machine will get a second auto assigned address on a private IP range. – William Hilsum – 2010-09-23T03:33:18.790
@Will: if I do "ping MACHINE_NAME", which IP address will be shown? – Craig Johnston – 2010-09-23T03:40:35.003
@Craig Johnston: If I ping a local macine (ie ping \MACHINE) it shows the IP in brackets, so yes. The other option is open the status of the connection (find it in control panel and double click on it), and its in there under Details. This shows you the IP of the machine you're currently on. – AkkA – 2010-09-23T03:51:54.533
@Akka: if I have 2 different IPs due to the wired and wirless connections, what IP address does my machine have? – Craig Johnston – 2010-09-23T04:53:21.180
@Craig: 2. Each network interface has its own IP address, just as each interface has its own MAC address. Basically, you will have one address for the wireless network, and one address for the cabled one. For all purposes, since you are linking two machines directly, the wireless IP would be the most relevant. If you think about it, since you're connecting to two networks, you need two addresses. If you were locked into the same address, you could have IP conflicts. – AkkA – 2010-09-23T06:08:10.877
@Craig Johnston - if you ping via the proper name, you will most likely see the WIFI ip address as this will be registered in DNS, however it will be pinging over the wired connection as it will automatically detect that is the quickest route. You can use the "Tracert <target>" command to see the route that is used. This is a very complicated subject. – William Hilsum – 2010-09-23T12:48:47.870
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I do something similar at work. I have two servers with dual gigabit Ethernet cards. The network they are connected to is 10/100Mb. So I connected the second NIC of each computer to the other. This way when the two servers sync, they go over the gigabit connection, and aren't slowed down by the switch (and aren't loading the LAN connection the other machines want to use).
In my case I gave the connection between the servers a different network address than the rest of the LAN, and no default gateway.
After a few seconds, the computers realized that connection between the computers were faster than the 10/100 and weighted the metrics to have the gigabit connection preferred for communication to the other server.
I imagine in your case with wired and wireless it should be the same.
Scott McClenning
Posted 2010-09-23T01:32:52.680
Reputation: 3 519
Why are you wanting to do this? Are you trying to increase speed? – James Mertz – 2010-09-23T01:39:30.277
@Kronos: to increase reliability for a program that uses a database on the other computer – Craig Johnston – 2010-09-23T01:48:15.880