Crossover Cable File Sharing

You don't need the internet, a LAN, or even a router to have two computers talk to one another. All you actually need is some way for them to talk to one another. In this tutorial, we're going to cover having two systems directly connect to one another with a Crossover Cable and how to implement filesharing between them using Linux.

Preliminaries

First we're going to need to procure a cable capable of full-duplex communication. This can be an ethernet cable designated as either Category 5E or Category 6. Note that if you're ethernet cable is Category 5, you will not be able to establish a direct connection with the other system! Usually, ethernet cables will have which category it's designated as printed somewhere along the length of its housing. If nothing else, all of the ethernet bundles in the Thrift Store are Cat 5E or Cat 6 and are quite cheap.

Secondly, we're going to have to install some software than can utilize an application protocol that both machines can understand. Here we'll go over using FTP and SSH, and a few different applications that utilize these protocols.