Connecting to macs by ethernet?

[laserbeam273]

I've done the instructed process of permitting file sharing on both computers, and making sure that the ethernet configures IPv4 automatically ("Using DHCP" right?), and I still can't get them to connect. I've tried manually entering the address of either computer in the "Connect to Server" window, but still no success. Any thoughts why this would be the case? Computers are in sig.

EDIT: Sorry it appears I've answered my own question. Computers needed a restart - don't quite get why that was necessary, but it's working now.

EDIT 2 (just to save bumping): They were connected directly by a single cable.

 

[swiftaw]

Are the macs both connected to a router by ethernet or directly connected to each other by ethernet?

 

[dyn]

For DHCP to work you'll need a DHCP server. If there is no DHCP server OS X will appoint itself an ip-address in the range of 169.254.0.0-169.254.255.255 (aka APIPA). By rebooting it apparently did just that. The only thing you need when connecting two machines directly are 2 different ip-addresses (one for each machine) and the same subnetmask. Simply setting 192.168.69.1 on one machine and 192.168.69.2 on the other would be enough (use a subnetmask of 255.255.255.0 on both). You can choose other ip-addresses in the so called class A, B and C ranges (check out RFC1597 if you want more in-depth information or Wikipedia if you want a simple overview of these ranges).