What's the difference between a crossover cable and a straight?

Crossover essentially has RX and TX flipped at one end. This lets two NICs talk to each other directly, without a hub or switch.

so if i have a standard ethernet cable I can't connect to NICs directly? Another question, if the router was working would the ifconfig show a carrier for the rl1 card?

It should say this:
For your rl2 card, try doing this: ifconfig rl2 up, and see if that will initialize your card.


As for your first question. You can connect two NICs directly, well. Not directly in a sense. They'd be connected by one forwarding to the other (I think). I'm in the same boat you are.

Don't be confused, Crunch does not have the same problem you do. If you plug two NICs into each other directly with a straight-through cable you will not get a carrier. That's why you (rcottere) only have an active linke on your external NIC.

If you had things plugged in correctly, it would not say "no carrier" on rl1.

i'm going to buy a crossover cable, and if i'll post the result when it arrives

Yet another questions. I know NAT converts IP address from the local subnet to the subnet of a larger network or the IP address of the box. Since i enabled a different subnet would i need to use NAT? Sorry if this is stupid question.

If that subnet is not publically accessable (meaning your isp didn't give you the numbers because they are meant to be internal) then you need NAT. I am pretty sure all your numbers are internal... unless you just gave fake numbers above -- you need NAT. Don't worry... it is VERY easy to setup. Just read the docs on the website.

Well all the numbers are internal, but how will the broadband router/firewall know where to send the traffic if it doesn't have a route to those networks? You either need to use NAT on the OpenBSD box, or enter a static route on the broadband router.

so i use a static route instead of NAT just to test it?

You misunderstood me, I was talking about a static route on your broadband router. The default route on the OpenBSD box points to the broadband router, so that's OK. The OpenBSD box will also dynamically add kernel routes for the subnet of each interface, so that's OK as well. The one thing you don't have is that the broadband router won't understand why it's getting traffic from the OpenBSD box that came from a different subnet. Unless you put a route for that subnet on the broadband router and point it at the OpenBSD box, you won't get any return traffic.