How to connect laptop and desktop w/NICs

[taxman]

On Sunday 13 April 2003 11:26 am, Wayne Pascoe wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 01:13:55PM +0100, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> > So far, so good.  I can ping each machine from the other, and reset these
> > settings on startup.
> >
> > However, the laptop (which I decided to make a client of the desktop, now
> > that I have a modem for the desktop) cannot ping past the gateway.  I
> > have the default router set to the desktop, but something else must be
> > wrong.
> >
> > Do I need to have inetd or natd running explicitly for this to work?
>
> Do you have
> gateway_enable="YES"
> in /etc/rc.conf ? If not you need to add this.

from rc.conf(5) it doesn't seem that gateway_enable starts natd.  Then what is 
the difference?
I'm a networking moron and in a similiar situation as Jonathon, and I was 
wondering which options to use.

Thanks,

Tim