Networks PC2PC Data transfer with cables

Hello,

I've been searching for this for a while: a way to transfer files easily from a laptop to a laptop by plugging in a cable in both devices (thinking back nostalgically about the graphical calculators in high school). But I have no idea how to get the fastest transfer speeds...

It seems some sites would recommend using a Gigabit Ethernet cable with twisted pairs, cat5(e) or cat6. But actual speeds are not easily found, this is what I wanted to ask first. Maybe the speeds are irrelevant since the read and write speeds are usually significantly lower (hence the 10 Gbps)? If speeds are relevant, what are they? Is cat6 worth the higher price?

Can anyone also give me any infos on USB bridge-cables? I've heard USB 3.0 works with a cross-over cable similar to twisted pair ethernet, but it wouldn't be compatible with USB 2.0 and it's hard to find it.

As you probably know by know, I have no experience at all on this subject. I'm sorry for any stupid questions, and will happily learn from my mistakes.

 

Gigabit can handle around 100 Megabytes per second if both adapters and the cable is compatible, otherwise it would downgrade to 10MB per second

USB3 would be handy as it's full duplex, it can send and receive files at the same time without affecting bandwidth.

 

Nice. How can I see what the theoretical max speed of a laptop is? What is the thing that matters?
For example: in the specs it says for mine:
-Gigabit LAN network controller (10/100/1000 Mbit/s)
-RJ45 connector

My guess is that the connector is always the same and that my max speed would be 1000 Mbit/s or 125 MB/s? Is that correct?

What do you mean with 'if the cable is compatible'?

 

If both adapters are Gigabit then you should have 125MB/s with a Cat 6 cable, for a moment I though Cat 5e might also be suitable but not according to Wikipedia.

 

I used to do these sort of thing often. You get cat6 crossover cable. Then make sure both computer is in same workgroup and set fixed ip address like 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 save and reboot both. They should be able to see each other then start the file transfer.
For usb3 I think all you need technically is an A to A cable and one pc should be master and the other slave should show up like a mass storage device but I have not tried it.
Though now personally I would rather just take out the drive I want to copy and put it in esata dock. It's much faster and no need to dick about with things.

 

I'm looking for a more mobile and fast solution that works with laptops also. Taking drives out is going a bit far for me .
I think I'm gonna give the cat6 crossover cable a try then! Many thanks for the help. I hope I'll manage to get the sharing settings and the IP stuff right...

 

Actually, you don't need a crossover cable, a normal one will be fine if both laptops have gigabit ethernet. Part of the gigabit spec includes auto-sense ethernet ports so any cable should work fine.

 

Awesome! You told me right in time (and well if it doesn't work it's fairly easy to do the crossing over yourself) +rep!