Raspberry Pi A, User Manual, Page: 46 / 314

P A R T I
C O N N E C T I N G T H E B O A R D
30
Wired Networking
To get your Raspberry Pi on the network, you’ll need to connect an RJ45 Ethernet patch cable
between the Pi and a switch, router or hub. If you don’t have a router or hub, you can get
your desktop or laptop talking to the Pi by connecting the two directly together with a patch
cable.
Usually, connecting two network clients together in this way requires a special cable, known
as a
crossover cable . In a crossover cable, the receive and transmit pairs are swapped so that
the two devices are prevented from talking over each other—a task usually handled by a
network switch or hub.
The Raspberry Pi is cleverer than that, however. The RJ45 port on the side of the Pi (see
Figure 2-6) includes a feature known as
auto-MDI , which allows it to reconfigure itself auto-
matically. As a result, you can use any RJ45 cable—crossover or not—to connect the Pi to
the network, and it will adjust its configuration accordingly.
Figure 2-6:
The Raspberry Pi
Model B’s
Ethernet port
TIP