I understand why two computers need a crossover cable between themselves to communicate. Without it, the transmit and receive wires are the same on each end, making any communication impossible. What I don't understand is if I have a regular patch cable connecting a switch and host, like so:
The way I'm understanding this, the transmit/receive wires are still the same between two different devices. If the switch wants to send something to the computer, the computer will receive it on its transmit wires. How does a straight-through cable not run into this issue? Are switch/router/hub ports configured differently in that they have their transmit/receive pins swapped from the computer's?