Additional wire connection between 2 PCs on wireless network

[merroe]

My son has got 2 workstations running Win10Pro 64bit. Both have a wireless connection to a router for their internet connection.

He regularly needs to transfer very large files from one PC to the other. Although he shares folders, the wireless connection is way too slow for the purpose.

Since hardwiring both PCs towards the router is not an option in his place, and since both PCs are in the same location, I would be interested in a simple additional bridge connection between both PCs, using a 1Mbps Ethernet cable.

I have tried to do that but I don’t get any further than that this connection is shown as an “unidentified network” on both. Obviously, I am creating some “triangle” in my network connections. That does not go down well.

Is what I’m thinking of possible? I wonder if some clever settings would make file transfers go via the wire, and Internet data via the wireless?

Thx for any thoughts.

 

[BadAsAl]

You can do it with a crossover cable: https://www.wikihow.com/Connect-Two-Computers-Together-with-an-Ethernet-Cable

 

[BFG-9000]

You don't need a crossover cable if even one of the ports is gigabit, because in practice all gigabit ports are auto-MDIX.

The problem is you don't have any router handing out IP addresses to those ports automatically, so you will have to go into the NIC settings for both computers and manually set a fixed IPv4 address for each, both in the same subnet.

 

[merroe]

Thx for the reactions.

Dear BFG-9000, yes that does the trick.

There are some further subtleties… Both PCs run Norton and the internal network security needs to be downgraded from “public” to “private”. I suppose that other types of firewall may need some similar fine-tuning. Also, the DHCP function in the internet router needs to be adjusted in a way that the 2 fix IP addresses being used for this setup are not given out again automatically, I suppose.

However, as for this addressing, the data go through the wire.

Thx again – problem solved!

 

[BadAsAl]

Learned something new today! I haven't done this in a while so now I know I don't need a special cable the next time I have to do this.
Cool!

 

[kanewolf]

The one other point that @BFG-9000 didn't explicitly mention is that you need to assign IP addresses in a different SUBNET than the IP addresses handed out by your router. If your router is 192.168.0.1 then you want to use 192.168.10.x for your wired subnet.

 

[merroe]

Thx Kanewolf, I will check out your idea too.

If it works, then it is more elegant since the router DHCP assigns IP addresses in the 192.168.0.2-254 range, and therefore I would not need to reconfigure that with your suggestion.

 

[kanewolf]

You don't change the DHCP, you make sure that the IP addresses you manually assign to the wired connection are in a different subnet. Anything but 0 as the third number.