three NICs in one computer - safe/viable? I need it to be a router and link up with my laptop

[lostatlantis]

hello~

I am a college student and everytime i am home it's a pain in the ass to hook up my dell inspiron to my home network, which consists of two towers. The main machine is a P3 800 running WinXP Pro with 256MB of RAM, and the second machine is my parents', a K6-2 w/ 128MB. Currently they are networked via 10Mbps Phoneline NICs, with another regular 10baseT 10Bbps NIC in the main machine to connect to my road runner cable modem.

Can I put in another 10/100Mbps NIC into my main rig, for a total of 3 NICs, and use a cross over cable to connect my laptop to the rig, and consequently the K6-2 and broadband cable connection? Right now the main rig is 192.168.0.1 and the K6-2 is 192.168.0.2. But with the third NIC in the main machine, what IP will it get? 192.168.0.3? But that's two IPs assigned to one machine... somehow that just doesn't click.

I know I can go buy a router, but I already have the extra NIC and I'll only be home during breaks.

Thanks for any help! I would appreciated it if you bump my thread and PM me ... somehow I always have trouble finding threads here 😉

 

[Nothinman]

Good luck, Windows has weird routing problems with just 2 NICs, I've never tried 3. Technically it should work though.

 

[ftp4you]

you have a hub with a uplick port? If so put the cable modem to the uplink port and your others on the normal ports and you'll have no problems.


I have a 10mbits netgear 4 port with uplink port i can sell ya for 20 shipped. About a year old but works great.


But 3 cards should work i think.... Never done it though....

 

[Dug]

It should work, but like Nothinman said, Windows is sketchy when bridging two seperate networks.
There was a technet buliten as MS about this, but I can't find it right now, sorry.

 

[Dug]

Try MS support.
ms support
In the search box pick Windows XP
Type in bridging multiple networks in the box below it and click search.
This should pull up more info than you care for, but you should be able to find what you need

 

[Valhalla1]

i dont see a problem.. here is what I am picturing -

XP main box , 1 nic to cable [DHCP], enable ICS on that connection.. second (phoneline) nic [192.168.0.1] to k6-2, third nic [192.168.0.3] goes to laptop
on the laptop, set the ip address static as 192.168.0.4, 255.255.255.0, set the primary DNS server as 192.168.0.3

would this not work like this?

 

[igiveup]

I would make sure you get a namebrand nic or at least one that isn't of the same type as the other two. Built a box and put windows 2000 server on it once and I used 2 DLink 530TX+'s. Not my idea but anyways. No matter what I did only one of the two would light up at any time. Must have been a driver issue, but the moment I dropped 2 3Com 905C's in there it popped. NO more issues.

 

[sml]

May be easier to get a 2 port hub or a crossover cable for this type of setup 🙂

 

[bot2600]

I have a similar setup and it works fine. I use one NIC to the cable modem. One nic to my LAN and a phoneline NIC to the machines around the rest of the house, I rent and my landlord would DIE if I drilled and ran CAT5 all over the house. Only issue you will have is ICS will not let you share your internet connection with two internal nics. I have win2k advanced server, so I just set it up with NAT in the RRAS module. I dont think your XP pro will have rras, so you will probably have to get sygate, or winproxy or something. If you do happen to have rras and need help configuring NAT, drop me a PM, it can be... interesting. 🙂

Bot

 

[Vagrant]

I use a usb network cable for mine. The driver has a network bridge you install to one of the base machines to let the usb side see the other machines on the lan. Ics is no trouble either. It makes it easy to link into the work lan, all the drivers fit onto a floppy, so no problems with workstations without cd-roms.