Gigabit Shares Between MP & PC

[stealiesubee]

Hello all,
I am been thinking about the best way to setup my network that will contain my old PC and my new MP. Both machines have dual gigabit ethernet ports. I would ideally like to have one port on each machine used soley for file shares, via a gigabit hub, between the 2 machines and use the other port on each machine to connect to the WRT54G access point I use to get on the internet. My problem is that I don't know how to dictate which traffic goes to a specific port. Do I need a gigabit switch with routing capabilities? Can Windows and OSX set up routing rules that will work? Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!!

 

[EricNau]

I'm not really familiar with this topic, but couldn't you just use a crossover cable to connect the two computers?

 

[Lanbrown]

Good luck finding a gigabit hub, there isn't one. I think you meant a gigabit switch.

Don't worry about ports, worry about networks. Here is what you do.

Create two networks.

Network 1 will be access to the internet. Let's use 192.168.0.0/24 for this network. On the MAC and the PC, use DHCP. Both machines will have a default-gateway to the router, in this case your Linksys WRT54G.

Network 2 will just connect the MAC to the PC. Let's use 192.168.128.0/24 for this. The MAC could have 192.168.128.50 as the IP and the PC could have 192.168.128.100. The subnet mask will be 255.255.255.0 for this network. When you need to have the MAC access the PC or the PC access the MAC, you use the 192.168.120.0 network. This bypasses your router entrirely. I wouldn't even use a switch for this network, I would use a cross-over cable.

 

[thebeephaha]

I'm not really familiar with this topic, but couldn't you just use a crossover cable to connect the two computers?

You don't need a crossover cable anymore the new gigabit cards in these macs reroute the pin assignments automatically if you use a standard cat5 patch cable.