Crossover Cable Confusion

[VNg7353752]

I bought this supposedly "crossover" cable from Fry's http://shop2.outpost.com/product/2567931/ went home and connected it. The cable is orange; the packaging said it's a "crossover" cable but I can't seem to find the word "crossover on the cable itself. Instead, this is what I found on the cable, "E188601 <UL> TYPE CM 24AWG/4PRS UTP VERIFIED ETL CAT 5 PATCH CABLE TO TIA/EIA 568A LL84201 CSA TYPE CMG FT4 COPARTNER."

The green LED on the ethernet card does lit, but I can't seem to ping the other computer. What's wrong? Is this because it's a patch cable? I'm confused..

[jokrswild]

look at the wires in both ends. If they match up exaclty, then it's just a patch cable.. if they don't, then it's a crossover. Of course there is also the possibility of them crimping it wrong. I forget the order and all, so someone else will have to say.

[Diggrr]

Here's a link to a previous post on this very subject.
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=65984

[VNg7353752]

If it's a patch cable, why does the LED on the ethernet card is lit?

[Diggrr]

No idea, never took the two minutes to find out what the lights are actually for.

[frodoski]

Here is a picture of a crossover cable.
http://home.earthlink.net/~frodoski/pictures/crossover.jpg

Also, the lights: the green light on the nic is the link light, the amber or somtimes red light is the tx (transmit) indicator.

It may also be that the machines are not in the same workgroup. You can check this by right clicking on the network neighborhood icon on the desktop and click properties to view the workgroup info.

[TC]

What are your network settings? When directly connecting two computers you will have to give each one a static IP that is in the same network. Try pinging the loopback address on each machine to make sure there's not a software problem. Sounds to me like your net settings aren't correct.

[VNg7353752]

I can successfully ping my localhost and 10.0.0.1 (the ip I assigned to this computer. However, I can't ping my other computer (10.0.0.2) and I can't ping this computer from the other computer. Also, the amber LED is lit but no the link LED. The computers have distinct names but same workgroup.

Any other suggestions? Both of my computers are running Win 98 First edition.

[TC]

If the link light is not lit you either have a bad cable or a bad nic. The link light being off indicates a physical layer problem.

[VNg7353752]

Update: after switching NIC's around, I got the 'ping thing' to work, but my ping are losing packets. I usually get 75% sent and received while the other 25% = "request timed out"


Any suggestions?

[drunkmonkey]

I've been having some messed up network probs, mainly the "network is busy" error, heres what I did:

Make your Ips a class c network.
IP: 192.168.0.xxx Subnet 255.255.255.0

try disabling dns in your tcp/ip settings, if they are screwed up it will hurt the network.

Make sure they are the same workgroup

That's all I can think of right now.