Cheap dual nic from smc- @ Axiontech

[CvAgent]

I saw this at axiontech clearance section

according to smc's site the price should be $300+

Link

 

[UltraWide]

HOT DEAL!!!!

it's $350 at SMC store:
http://www.smc.com/smcstore/products/prodPreview.asp?Fam=SMC9334BDT&Cat=EN

 

[da bastard]

ok, I see how its $350, but how does this beat 2 NICs? I cant see it being worth much more than $65 unless you are really pressed for PCI slots. Also who would use this? Iknow I can since I am a gateway for a LAN to the internet.... but are there other apps of it?

 

[Ranger X]

What are you talking about? Dual port NIC cards does not necessarily function as two NIC cards. Ever heard of load balancing?

 

[AnimeKnight]

dang.. that's some heavy nic card

Weight : 2 Lbs


OT: what is load balancing? how can fully utilize this card?

 

[jrichrds]

ooh yah! For those in a college dorm environment with multiple ethernet connections, the load balancing feature would be great! Imagine this...hooking up your computer to 2 100MBit dedicated ports instead of just one. I peak at 3MB/second off the web on my ethernet connection. $60 is a small price to pay to double that!

 

[Siamskunk]

So there is no point to hook it up if I only use one DSL connection?
pls enlight me

 

[dude]

Right. DSL has a max of 4 megs, if you can afford that service. Ethernet is 10-100 megs. All these are megabits, not bytes.

 

[jrichrds]

Siamskunk,

You'd need separate connections to benefit from load-balancing as far as Internet access goes.
Load balancing explained in a very simplified way: requests from the web (as an example) are split up between the 2 separate connections, with each doing roughly half the work (assuming the 2 are of the same speed). Thus, you're utilizing both connections at the same time = 2x the bandwidth.

 

[Siamskunk]

I'm getting smarter everyday after I joined this forum........thank you guys.

 

[dude]

Quick and easy. Remember Diamond Technologies before that piece of trash company S3 took it over which got out of the graphic card business anyways? <rant off>

Remember shotgun technology? Same thing. 2 modems sharing the same load. In fact, Win98 SE has this built in.

 

[holden j caufield]

good price but it would still be cheaper to use 2 10/100 nics and then install the network load balancing service in windows 2000. We actually had this card on one of the servers at work but it didn't have windows 2000 drivers for the dual port. Though they did have drivers for the single port 9334bdt.

 

[AnimeKnight]

so if you have both cable and dsl.. with this you can actually have them share the load???

 

[RoadRuner]

ok a dual nic or triple, quad etc (i have a quad

is basically the chips for multiple cards, and a pci-bridge.

saves real-estate.

i've got some servers here with well over 6 pci cards (with onboard video/sound/ethernet too).

so for routing services boxes, yes its important to have these multi-nic cards.


Btw, if you were to setup both dsl and cable on your linux/freebsd NAT firewall/gateway box, you could do asymetrical load-balancing...

 

[cbass98]

holden j caufield,

Could you enlighten us where to activate the load balancing service in W2K? I went to administrative services, but didn't find it there. Do I need W2k server edition perhaps (using Pro now)?

-Cbass98