Cannot connect to another user over LAN

Forgive me if this is the wrong section but I am unfamiliar with how to properly characterize this problem. This is also my first post. My friend has another Mac and we are simply trying to share files between two Macs, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to even see him on my network. We are connected to the same network, we have file sharing activated, appletalk active, and we've even tried to ping each other with Network Utility. The ping results are below:

Ping has started ...

PING 10.1.59.10 (10.1.59.10): 56 data bytes

--- 10.1.59.10 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

Any ideas??