"Split" Single gigabit cable for 2 pcs at 100mbps?

[spiderdan]

A friend of mine had a gigabit ethernet cable running from his router to his desktop. He then decided he wanted a wired connection for his laptop as well. According to him, he was able to split the connection going to his desktop to power both computers. I have heard of people plugging 4 conductors from an ethernet cable into a head which they plug into one port on their router and the remaining 4 to another thereby allowing them to use 1 cable for 2 computers, but it sounds like my friend used 1 router gigabit ethernet port for two computers. Is this even possible? Thanks ahead of time. I can't figure this one out.

 

[Guest]

Sounds like he used Windows Internet Connection Sharing.

 

[spiderdan]

Thanks for the reply fihart. I thought about this as well but he says he is using only 1 nic with each computer. Perhaps his laptop is still connecting through wireless and he just doesn't realize it. Think I'm gonna have to ask him to show me this cable.

EDIT: Guess I should elaborate to say that, according to him, he has created a sort of "y adapter" using only ethernet cable which allows each computer to be assigned a unique ip address. I think he's mistaken but thought I'd check since it is possible to get 100mbps using only four conductors, so I figured maybe I was just unaware that you could use 1 port on a gigabit router to do so.