What excactly is the difference between a one way cable and crossover.
A crossover cable has the send and recieve wires at one end swaped. This is so the data sent out of computer A goes to the recieve on computer B, you don't want a send and send tied together. If you have a hub, router or switch this is taken care of, thats why you would usualy use a straight through.

I could not aford a hub so I elected to use a crossover. I only have two computers but have been made aware three computers can still be networked without a hub, using two ethernet cables where the middle computer is set in the registry to act as a router. I have not tried this since I have only two computers.