I was stationed in South Korea back in 1999, and I knew basically nothing about computer networking! I knew what an IP and Ethernet address were, as well as what a MAC address was and what its purpose was in a network. Besides a few other misjoined knowledge points, that was about it. I had a computer that I had bought in my advanced training, and my buddy had a computer he had built while we were in Korea. At the time, one of the most popular games available to us was 'Delta Force', which was developed and published by @NovaLogicInc, which apparently has been acquired by @THQNordic. The game had a network capability so you could play with others, either over a LAN, or the Internet. My buddy and I thought it would be cool to play together! What did we do? We directly connected our computers together and tried to launch the game! However, despite setting valid static IP addresses on each machine, we were never able to see each other on the network, or play together, obviously. Sadly, for us, we had no idea what a 'crossover' Ethernet cable was, or why it is important for directly connecting computers to each other. In a regular Ethernet (patch) cable, the RJ-45 connectors are made in the same fashion, with the same wires in the same positions. Whereas crossover cables are made with the individual wires crossing over each other. See image below. Old networking devices were not able to determine if a straight through or crossover cable was being used, so you had to know which cable was utilized in each scenario; however, modern networking devices are able to determine the cable pinout and adjust the bit stream sent down the cable. Since even low-end networking hardware is relatively cheap today, like the 8-port Gigabit Netgear switch, I have not knowingly used a crossover cable, and all the patch cables I have made in the last 10 years have all been straight through cables.