I'm going to a 550 player lan party http://www.lanwar.com/, they will be using 10/100 switches on a DHCP network. I was wondering if it was possible to use one computer with two 10/100 PCI NICs to bind them both together to achieve a 20/200 Mbit network for the computer. Each 10/100 PCI NIC have one RJ45 jack. I'm going to use two cat6 cables to connect both NICs to a 10/100 switch. I'm using WinXP Pro and need to know how to bind both NICs to achieve a 20/200 Mbit network for my computer.
20/200 network with duel 10/100 PCI NICs
- Thread starter jolteon
- Start date
MedicBob
Diamond Member
- Nov 29, 2001
- 4,151
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WOW, have a good time and stay sober(ish) if you are driving.
About the binding 2 NIC's, I was literally just talking to a NetAdmin(friend) about doing this to a server. It is possible but we think it requires outside software that is cost prohibitive for us, me and you, little people.
But if anyone knows this is a good place to get answers.
Plus I would like to know also.
About the binding 2 NIC's, I was literally just talking to a NetAdmin(friend) about doing this to a server. It is possible but we think it requires outside software that is cost prohibitive for us, me and you, little people.
But if anyone knows this is a good place to get answers.
Plus I would like to know also.
It would be quite difficult to program also since the MAC address and lower level ARP requests would have to be controlled at the higher up software layer.
The software layer would need to fragment the packets and present overide the onboard firmware of the NIC card's to insert a virtual MAC address on the source so that it appears as the machine only has one MAC address or other computers will be confused when getting ACK/SYN from two differnt MAC cards.
I do belieave the closest I have heard about two NIC's acting as one is only in failsafe of redundancy. I think Intel has a card in the Gigabit line that does some sort of heart beat to determine when one dies off and then just remaps the new card with the old MAC address and bring it online. This method doesn't mean you use both at the same time but allows for redundacy of NICs for when one fails.
The software layer would need to fragment the packets and present overide the onboard firmware of the NIC card's to insert a virtual MAC address on the source so that it appears as the machine only has one MAC address or other computers will be confused when getting ACK/SYN from two differnt MAC cards.
I do belieave the closest I have heard about two NIC's acting as one is only in failsafe of redundancy. I think Intel has a card in the Gigabit line that does some sort of heart beat to determine when one dies off and then just remaps the new card with the old MAC address and bring it online. This method doesn't mean you use both at the same time but allows for redundacy of NICs for when one fails.
Its very easy to do but you need the hardware to support it. Intel makes 10/100/1000 cards that you can bind up to 4. meaning 4x100 megabit cards. It does it on the driver level and is much more efficient than any OS could do.
Then you use etherchannl or port bonding features on the ethernet switch.
bottom line - you need strict coordination and configuration on the switch and nics.
Then you use etherchannl or port bonding features on the ethernet switch.
bottom line - you need strict coordination and configuration on the switch and nics.
Spidey is right.. there is an aggregating technology that can be leveraged with the Intel cards.
Not only the Gigabit lines I find out though.
Link 1
Link 3
Link 2
To do Link Aggreagtion as Spidey mentioned the switch has to support FEC (Fast EtherChannel) or GEC (Gigabit Etherchannel) though.
If the switch does not support this then Adaptive Load Balancing can be performed but this is more or less like round robin for sessions/host. It is not on a per packet basis.
The failover technology that I was talkiing about earlier Intel calls it Adapter Fault Tolerance
Seems like if you have the cards that can do Adaptive Load Balancing but not the switches that can do FEC or GEC you may be able to squeeze out some more speeds with ALB.
The way ALB works is outbound is load balanced acrossed the differnt NICs but inbound is recieved by only one NIC. There must be something in the driver software that reconfigures the NIC firmware not to answer ARP request unless they are the primary for incoming traffic.
Better used in a server enviroment instead of workstation.
Not only the Gigabit lines I find out though.
Link 1
Link 3
Link 2
To do Link Aggreagtion as Spidey mentioned the switch has to support FEC (Fast EtherChannel) or GEC (Gigabit Etherchannel) though.
If the switch does not support this then Adaptive Load Balancing can be performed but this is more or less like round robin for sessions/host. It is not on a per packet basis.
The failover technology that I was talkiing about earlier Intel calls it Adapter Fault Tolerance
Seems like if you have the cards that can do Adaptive Load Balancing but not the switches that can do FEC or GEC you may be able to squeeze out some more speeds with ALB.
The way ALB works is outbound is load balanced acrossed the differnt NICs but inbound is recieved by only one NIC. There must be something in the driver software that reconfigures the NIC firmware not to answer ARP request unless they are the primary for incoming traffic.
Better used in a server enviroment instead of workstation.
As santa says (!) there are a number of professional cards that allow load balancing over muliple NICs but it's normally reserved for servers. Intel pro 100+ card support it but you need a fairly hefty switch that also supports it.
Silly question, but what are you going to do with 200Mbits of bandwith?
Silly question, but what are you going to do with 200Mbits of bandwith?
You can do it but it would only gain you super fast download ability. Your latentcy would go through the roof which won't work for gaming.
Garion
Platinum Member
- Apr 23, 2001
- 2,331
- 7
- 81
There are a variety of ways that this can be accomplished - Hardware solutions, software/driver solutions, switch trunking, etc.
There are instances where mult-interface servers make sense - In the enterprise, where there's redundant switches or your server needs more bandwidth than is available on a single link.
In reality, for the average home or small office user, there's zero benefit for linking two NIC's together. In fact, there are some distinct disadvantages of doing so.
Most people have a broadband connection to the Internet. While that might sound impressive, reality is that broadband really tops out at about 3Mb/s, 1/33nd of your 100BaseT link. Most LAN games are designed to run quite happily at about 128Kb/s. Some newer ones need more (256Kb/s) but not beyond that. - 1/400th the speed of a 100BaseT card.
Adding a 2nd NIC has two main disadvantages - It adds a tiny bit of latency since the software or (a fraction of a milisecond, but it could make the difference between fragging and being fragged), and you're making your system a LOT more complex. You might be able to get it working intially, but it could cause a lot of problems and headaches down the road when something breaks and you have to troubleshoot it. Nobody will know your config and nobody will be able to help.
This is one of those "kitchen sink" scenarios. Can you? Probably so, assuming you can figure it out. Is there any reason to do so? Nope. Is there a reason NOT to? Yup.
Why bother? It might sound cool, but it's really not going to buy you anything, and will just end up being a hassle.
- G
There are instances where mult-interface servers make sense - In the enterprise, where there's redundant switches or your server needs more bandwidth than is available on a single link.
In reality, for the average home or small office user, there's zero benefit for linking two NIC's together. In fact, there are some distinct disadvantages of doing so.
Most people have a broadband connection to the Internet. While that might sound impressive, reality is that broadband really tops out at about 3Mb/s, 1/33nd of your 100BaseT link. Most LAN games are designed to run quite happily at about 128Kb/s. Some newer ones need more (256Kb/s) but not beyond that. - 1/400th the speed of a 100BaseT card.
Adding a 2nd NIC has two main disadvantages - It adds a tiny bit of latency since the software or (a fraction of a milisecond, but it could make the difference between fragging and being fragged), and you're making your system a LOT more complex. You might be able to get it working intially, but it could cause a lot of problems and headaches down the road when something breaks and you have to troubleshoot it. Nobody will know your config and nobody will be able to help.
This is one of those "kitchen sink" scenarios. Can you? Probably so, assuming you can figure it out. Is there any reason to do so? Nope. Is there a reason NOT to? Yup.
Why bother? It might sound cool, but it's really not going to buy you anything, and will just end up being a hassle.
- G
What type of switches will you be using? Some less expensive managed switches have the capabilities mentioned above. Heck if you are in a major market area and have medium business sized or larger sponsor you might be able to get cisco, extreme networks, foundry, hp, or nortel to sponsor your network. Actually as I read your FAQ just have a reseller or VAR sponsor loan you one.
Gotta agree with Garion, what benefit could it be for a client? The only reason this might (I say might, because I don't know) be beneficial is if you were hosting/serving one of the games that the LANparty connected to, otherwise, there should be no benefit for dual NICs on game clients since games are probably not configured to handle these capabilities. As mentioned, the Intel NIC's come with the drivers for teaming NICs. 3Com also sells the software separate from their NICs (last time I checked).
For teaming of two NIC's for load balancing (either brand mentioned above), typically any switch should work. But it's not possible to use the benefits of Etherchannel or 802.3ad without a more expensive and compatible switch. You might not gain any benefit since games are not designed for this even if used on the host/server.
--- Sorry, didn't read the URL first, but you couldn't use IPX (lower latency) instead of IP.
For teaming of two NIC's for load balancing (either brand mentioned above), typically any switch should work. But it's not possible to use the benefits of Etherchannel or 802.3ad without a more expensive and compatible switch. You might not gain any benefit since games are not designed for this even if used on the host/server.
--- Sorry, didn't read the URL first, but you couldn't use IPX (lower latency) instead of IP.
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