martin f krafft wrote:
I have one of those D-Link USB network interfaces, which are wonderful. Plug it in, get a regular 10/100 Ethernet interface, supported by Linux and working just fine. However, right now I am in dire need to establish a link between two machines, and my beloved ethernet cable will, of course, not do the trick, and a hub is nowhere to be found. I used to have a crosslink cable too, but those things tend to grow legs very quickly, and all of the ones I've ever had always did.
With practice, you can make an Ethernet cross-over cable in ten seconds with a crimp tool and a spare piece of CAT 5 and two RJ45's.
The crimper (plastic cheap kind) can usually be found for about $6-$7, and the RJ45's -- well, I haven't run out of the box of 100 I bought ten years ago, and I've made a LOT of cables. (Obviously not 50 of them. Heh.)
Pairs made up of pins 1 & 2 and 3 & 6 swap places. You can find the full color code online and "do it right", but if you swap those two pair correctly, 100-Base-T works fine. Don't mess with pins 7 & 8 (put them in the same place) if you're doing any Power over Ethernet (you're probably not).
It's googleable, cheap, and reliable to just do it with your own tools and know-how.
The USB crap isn't going to run anywhere close to 100 Mb/s -- why bother with it?
By the way, an old trick -- make your crossover cables out of PINK Cat 5 cable. No male alpha-geek apparently wants to be caught dead with a PINK cable in their backpack of toys -- so they don't grow legs as fast. LOL! Mine tends to stay right where-ever I left it.
Nate