This is likely the trivial case.
The "connection" for a wifi link consists of three parts:
- association -- the radio parts see and interact with each other; they agree on channels and find matching bandwidth settings
- authentication -- once the radios are talking, parts exchange security details;
the workstation requests and the router (usually) provides an IP address using DHCP
- application -- the workstation can now use any internet features to send and receive data
All of this is the same regardless of whether windows or mac or linux or iPhone or Android are
in the role of either box.
Do you get far enough that the two boxes can use a browser (firefox, chromium, konquerer, etc) to browse the internet? If so, all of the above works.
From your browser, name services take your desired web address,
http://www.linuxquestions.org , and discovers the internet address (a string of numbers) needed to communicate. This is exactly like using a telephone directory seeking, John Smythe, and learning 204-555-1234, or similar.
For box1 to open a web page on box2, box1 needs to know the IP address for box2.
On your home network, this might stay the same for very long periods of time. However,
this can and does change as you use DHCP as described earlier.
Does this information move you closer to what you need to do?
~~~ 0;-Dan