Any benefit/detriment to two network cards?

[patrick24601]

I have my wireless card going in my laptop all of the time. When I am at my desk I jack into the Cat5. So right now I am connected into my home network twice with two different IPs.

Am I gaining or losing any performance by doing this? How does traffic decide which route to go?

 

[JackMDS]

You probably loosing Network's power capacity, the Network can handle only one connection at the time while keeping active two connections.

In order to benefit from this you need a Dual WAN Router.

Combining two Internet Connections - Combining Bandwidth, or and Load Balancing of two Internet connections.

:sun:

 

[patrick24601]

Sweet. Thanks.

 

[nweaver]

I think Jack misunderstood. You have 2 connections to your HOME network, not 2 seperate connections to the INTERNET.

Usually, windows will see higher speed on the wired and prefer that connection. I would't worry about it.

 

[patrick24601]

You are correct sir

 

[FreshPrince]

if you want home networking with microsoft, you might want to turn off netbios on one of the nics.

 

[JackMDS]

Sorry about the misunderstanding in my previous post.

You can configure the Metrics in each Network card.

Put Metrics of 10 in the Wired and Metrics of 20 in the Wireless.

When the Wire is unplugged to would have Wireless connection. When the Wired plug it would take over the connection since it as lower metrics.

1. In Control Panel, double-click Network Connections.
2. Right-click a network interfaces, and then click Properties.
3. Click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click Properties.
4. On the General tab, click Advanced.
5. To specify a metric, on the IP Settings tab, click to clear the Automatic metric check box, and then enter the metric that you want in the Interface Metric field.

Look like this. http://www.ezlan.net/network/metrics.jpg

More about this topic here, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0405.mspx

:sun: