Apparantly it's a feature called Auto MDI-X, and is available on a few network cards out there, usually gigabit NICs and priced near $100. Thanks for the responses.

If I had two machines, one used for video work and other data-intensive purposes and the other used essentially as data storage for the first server as well as our network, what's the fastest way to ...

An Ethernet cable in which the transmit line connects to the receive line at the other end and vice versa. It is used today primarily to connect one computer to another for data transfer. In the past, ...