The installation of this kind of network is very simple. First you will need to install a second network card on the computer that has your broadband Internet connection. Some high-end motherboards have already two on-board network cards, allowing you to build this kind of network without needing to buy and install a second card. On Figure 3 we show the detail of a motherboard with such feature.

click to enlarge
Figure 3: Example of a high-end motherboard with two on-board network cards.

The second and final step is really simple: just connect each end of the cross-over cable to each computer and that’s it! Your network will be assembled!

If you want to connect more than two computers without using a router, you will need to connect a pin-to-pin cable (and not a cross-over one) to the computer that has your Internet connection and the other end of the cable to a hub or switch, and then all other computers to this hub or switch. The configuration procedure is the same.

But your network won’t be working. You will need to configure the operating system on the computer that has your broadband Internet connection (for simplicity let’s call it “host computer”). Basically what we will need to do is to share your Internet connection. The configuration of the other computer (let’s call it “client computer”) is really simple, as we will only need to tell it to use all configurations set by the host computer.

Let’s see how this needs to be done.