Duel Lan connections on MB?

[CHARLIEBORG]

I have a ASUS P8P67 EVO MB with duel lan connections. Would there be a advantage to hooking up both lan connections to my Router? One is a Realtek 811osc gigabit and the other is a Intel 82579 gigabit.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Probably not.

If you have something else on your network that you access on a regular basis (like a fileserver) that is limited by a single-GbE connection (so, an expensive file server)

Then if you have dual NICs at both ends (otherwise, there's no benefit)

Then if your router/switch supports aggregate links. (Most home routers won't, so you'd probably have to buy a new switch.)

Then if the OS on your PC and the OS on your server can be configured to dual aggregate links. (Most can.)

Then if you can configure everything right. (Always a hassle.)

THEN - and only then - you will have better performance along that pathway. It won't make your internet faster, or get your computer to make you coffee, or make you younger and better looking.

If none of those apply, you could still try to mess with it for fun.

 

[evident]

why do so many motherboards offer dual nic if it seems like not many people take advantage of it? I'm really curious as to what kinds of uses can for dual nics can be. doesnt seem like much, or if there is, it's very difficult to take advantage of.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Dual homing, routing, firewall, iSCSI. Enough possible scenarios that it's a checkbox on a pro or prosumer motherboard.

NIC-teaming is more useful for servers. (A server w/ 2x or 4x 1GbE can feed full 1GbE to two/four clients at the same time.)

 

[tsupersonic]

Motherboards are full of useless features...just look at the marketing for some of these boards

 

[nickbits]

I use my dual nics. I have the 2nd on a separate subnet for my 4 hd home run tuners (2x2) so the main network traffic doesn't cause any issue with recording.

 

[Wall Street]

One interesting way to use dual nics is that high end NICs like the Intels don't have driver support built into the Windows disk, so you use the Realtek one to install windows, and once you download the newest drivers and get everything up to date, switch to the Intel one. Also, you can hook one up to the modem and one to another device for pass through if you are too cheap to buy a router.

 

[CHARLIEBORG]

Good info! The recording thing sounds interesting. I am wanting to drop Dish and do some kind of online recording of shows. Any info on how to set one up would be appreciated!

 

[zir_blazer]

As far that I know, with Dual LAN and two ISPs you could do Load Balancing for Internet purposes, or have some form of automatic redundancy if one connection fails. The problem was at the Software side of the things, specifically on Windows based platforms. At least I heared that some people with old computers with 3 NICs and 2 ISPs could repurpose them as firewalls and load balancers using Linux as OS, then using the last NIC to send that to the router and feeding multiple machines. This was apparently easy to work with once set up properly because for all the other machines but the firewall one, the fact that they were using 2 ISPs simultaneously was transparent.

During 2008 I had 2 ISPs, a single NIC for a Cablemoden and a USB ADSL Modem. I spended quite a bit of time but didn't managed to make them work simultaneously on Windows XP, you needed additional Software, which were paid, and I couldn't even get the trial versions to work. Some of Windows 2000 Server editions supposedly had Load Balancing support built in.