When to Use a Crossover or Straight Through

When to use a crossover cable or Straight Through Cable:

Computer to Computer                  – Crossover
Switch to Switch                              – Crossover
Computer to Modem                      – Straight Through
Computer to Switch                        – Straight Through
Switch To Router                            – Both (if you have problems, go with crossover)

Finding the MAC address of a remote computer

today i was proposed with an interesting challenge, i had two identical VM’s running, with the same name, and static IP settings, one one production, and one was not, it was my job to figure it out. So what did i do?
the first thing i did was open up a command prompt and type the following to remove all my cached ARP/DNS Settings
netsh interface ip delete arpcache
pinged the device to get some basic information
ok, so we know the device resolves to 192.168.1.111 from there i issued the following command:
arp -a
this lists all the devices that are in the ARP table of your local computer

as you can see, i was able to find out what the MAC address of the NIC that was responding
from there, i went in, found out what system was the live, and what one was dead by issuing the following command at the local system command prompt:
ipconfig /all