file and internet sharing w/o router

[aizlumzan]

me and my housemate share one DSL conection with a router. the router was having problrm so its on warranty issue...

My housemate keep saying that its possible to share the conncetion without any router or hub. Is it ?

What if we just want to just share files without the router?

This is what we have now.
Network card on each PC with XP
network cable
and the DSL modem...

[ilw]

most likely if you were connecting each computer to the router you would have network patch cables (the most common kind), in order to directly conect your two computers together you would need a network crossover cable. (or a patch to crossover converter).
If for some reason you have a crossover cable you can just connect your computers together directly and then set up Internet connection sharing on the network see: http://www.homenethelp.com
However, in my experience the computer not directly conected to the modem gets crappy speeds

distinguishing between patch and crossover (http://www.perfectdrivers.com/howto/crossover.html)