I'm not particularly great with networking, so excuse the utter naivety of this question;
My PC connects to a router downstairs via a very long ethernet cable. When I try to connect my Arduino to my PC via a seperate ethernet cable, I can't seem to connect to it. Windows just says "Identifying..." before giving up and assigning an auto config IP (169.*).
When I hijack the cable from the router and plug to the Arduino instead (after reserving the IP), everything works excellently and I can connect to the WebServer via my iPhone.
Am I trying to achieve something that isn't possible? It would be much more convenient to be able to leave my PC connected to the router without swapping things over every time I want to test something.
If you connect your PC to your Arduino directly you either need a crossover cable or a standard cable and a crossover adapter. And unless you program your arduino as a DHCP server, Windows isn't going to get a valid IP address.
You could pick up an inexpensive 5-port Ethernet switch, and install it next to your PC. That would let you connect the Arduino and PC to the long cable simultaneously.
I just modified an old network cable to be a crossover, and will look into the DHCP libraries. Thanks
I would buy a switch but the intended use for the project will require it to connect to a laptop via ethernet, possibly in remote locations where it'd be a bit impractical to carry a switch.
