Re: mac,pc, ethernet

On the one hand, don't do it!; for several reasons. This from many years working in LAN Tech Support. I would not expect this to work. At least from a design point of view, Ethernet is not designed to allow this to work. It might damage something. (or might not, no guarantees). It might even work, but I would not expect it. Continually having to swap the cable might get to be a little repetitive, in a mindless way, but really, what do you stand to gain if it does work? Unless your setup is cramped for space in some way that makes it physically difficult to repeatedly get at the cable to swap it, why not just manually switch the cable when you want to? (like, do you have to contort yourself, suspended from a ceiling, upside down, in room with no light, in order to reach the plug?) You can get small Hubs (they aren't really called Hubs anymore, they are called Switches, but they basically serve the same purpose, only better), like a 4 port or 5 port, for $10 to $20 second-hand. Even if you spring for a Hub, this does not eliminate the potentail IP conflict.

On the other hand, I gave up Tech Support a few years ago, so...go for it! It's kooky enough, what the hey? I remember a few years back there was a company that made a $5 gizmo to facilitate this, but I forget what it was called. Worst case, you might pop 1 to 3 Ethernet interfaces. Just remember, your ISP is going to handout a single IP Address, but you'll have two computers attempting to learn that single address. The assumption here is that both computers are set to run DHCP Client IE> "acquire IP automatically". Meanwhile, the DHCP Server (probably located somewhere at the other end of the "modem wire" may get confused when it sees a reponse from 2 different MAC Addresses. If by chance they figure out a way to both acquire that same IP address, a conflict will arise if the idle computer generates any packets during the same period when the active computer is active. Even idle computers generate some packets every now and then, like a heart beat, or keep alive. Good luck. Tweet