What do crossover cables do?

[doobi18]

Whenever I look in tech-shops, I always see in the cables section the standard "blue" cat5 ethernet cable, but also one named "crossover".

The packaging always alludes to something along the lines of letting two computer communicate directly without a router...

...but I do that all the time with a standard cable?

What do these crossover cables do that is so special?

Or is it just a mac thing that lets you use a standard ethernet cable to communicate directly?


Cheers


Jasper

 

[EricNau]

Most, if not all, computers today have ethernet ports that automatically compensate for the wrong cable. Before these special ports, a crossover cable was indeed necessary to connect two computers/hosts without a switch/router.

 

[kyleaa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable

Like was previously stated, these are generally not needed.