Networking :: basic network help

I am fairly new to linux and very new to dsl. I have two old computers running the current version and they are both plugged into my router and are both able to access the internet without me needing to configure anything. I was impressed by this!
What i now need to Know is this, is it possible to access/control an xterminal window on one box from the other? I have not set up any networking on them so far as i don't know how. All the other computers on the network are windows machimes and they use dynamic ip addressing although i do not actually need the dsl boxes to talk to those.
As you can probably guess i am trying to run several dsl boxes to do a simple fixed job without the need for multiple mice/kbs/monitors or a kvm.
Any help for this project would be great. Many thanks, Hiro.

I think i have solved the first bit of the problem, using the ifconfig command i have managed to set up the eth0 to a static ip address for each machine and can now ping from one to the other successfully.
However i still need to know if it is possible to control one from the other, ie. a remote desktop or even a remote terminal.
Many thanks, Hiro.

I have discovered the telnet command and wondered if i could use that? I have tried typing telnet followed by the ip address of the other computer but get the following message:

telnet: Unable to connect to remote host:Connection refused.

Does anybnody have any idea why this is? Do i have to use the computer name instead of the ip address and if so how do i give the computer a name?

Many thanks, Hiro.

There is a ssh server and client included with DSL.

Use that.

I seem to be getting the same failure connection with ssh as i get with telnet. I typed ssh followed by my ip address and with the verbose switch got the following.

ssh_confgi line 17: Deprecated option "fallBackToRsh"
ssh_config line 18: Deprecated option "UseRsh"
Rhosts Authentication disabled, originating port will not be trusted
connecting to 192.168.0.2 port 22
connecting to address 192.168.0.2 port 22: Connection refused
ssh: Connect to host 192.168.0.2 port 22: Connection refused

Do i need to set up anything on the other machine to tell it to allow access and if so how do i do this?
My linux "bible", Que's Using Linux is a bit vague on this point to say the least.
Many thanks for the help so far, Hiro.

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