networking ... (was: eth(n)er card :)

[ulrike@example.com]

My corega card problem now has a happy ending: the shop where I bought it
finished renovation and was open to business again, so I got a replacement for
my card, the same model again, and this time it worked! So it seems the card
before got damaged somehow.

Now I have a new problem: I tried to connect my Linux desktop with my Linux
laptop, but without success so far. On both machines eth0 shows up with
ifconfig, but pinging does not work.

According to what I understood from a Linux Journal Article, the Net-HOWTO, and
some other handbooks I have to edit /etc/hosts to include the adresses and
machine names, edit /etc/network/interfaces to include address, network,
netmask, broadcast, gateway and do "ifup -a" and, maybe this is double, also do
"route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 eth0". I also came across
"route add -net default gw 192.168.1.1", but when I do this I get "SIOCADDRT:
File exists". Anything else I have to do? 

Uli