OK, let's make things clearer.

The network cable for connecting the empeg to a hub/switch is a standard patch cable. For a peer-to-peer connection use the crossover variant. Both cables have RJ45 connectors on both sides and have 4 twisted pair wires inside (a total of 8 wires, though only 4 wires are necessary.) This explains the TP part in the following notations:
STP - Shielded Twisted Pair
UTP - Unshielded Twisted Pair

Twisted Pair is just one of the many wiring methods. Other well known are flat-cable, coax.

The quality of the cable is category 5, which means that pair 2 is placed around pair 3 in the RJ45 connector. For instance the following order for a patch cable:
white-orange/orange/white-green/blue/white-blue/green/white-brown/brown.
For the crossover variant one end of the cable is wired as above, for the other end the orange and green pairs are exchanged places. I added two GIFs for better understanding.

CAT5 UTP/STP is rated for a maximum of 100Mbps (100Base-T) and can of course be used for 10Mbps (10Base-T) as well.

Recommended IP-adresses and associated subnet masks for a private LAN (RFC 1597):

Class A 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 / 8 (255.0.0.0)
Class B 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 / 16 (255.255.0.0)
Class C 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 / 24 (255.255.255.0)

Be sure not to use the .0 and .255 addresses, these are for network wide functionality.

You could also use the subnet mask 255.255.0.0 for the 192.168.x.x range as well. The associated masks are not mandatory. Just make sure the subnet masks of the empeg as well as your pc are the same.

For the gateway IP address there are four options:
1 - Leave blank
2 - All '0's
3 - empeg's IP address
4 - router's IP address if connections outside LAN to/from empeg are necessary

After any change sync! But you already know that of course.

I always use the following 'checklist':
1. Check IP address & subnet mask of pc with winipcfg or ipconfig/all (if running on Windows platform.)
2. Check IP address & subnet mask of empeg in the about menu.
3. Check TCP/IP functionality on pc with a local ping.
4. Check link LEDs on pc's NIC and empeg.
5. Check logical network connection with a ping from pc to empeg.

And last but not least, I prefer DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) over static addresses. Emplode will find the player anyway (broadcast discovery.)

Edwin de Vaan
mk2 rev.7 Trillian # 080000263 6+20Gb blue/red