Why do higher end motherboards have 2 Lan connectors

[powerMarkymark]

How is this an advantage?

M@rc

 

[ForumMaster]

so that you can connect to two different networks? also, it can allow teaming which you can either use for fault tolernace or to combine the two and get a 2Gb connection.

 

[Glavinsolo]

Think of it like Raid

Raid 1, 5 - reliability, fault tolerance, disaster recovery
Raid 0 - Performance

Teaming - Fault tolerance, one nic dies etc.
Load Balance - With 2 cables attached you can set %'s as to who has more work to do split from 100%
Faster Speed - Get 2 cable modems or 1 cable modem and 1 dsl/fios modem and connect both to the pc, set the one with the highest bandwidth to take 75% and the lowest 25% or any other config

It's quite nice if you run a web/file etc server that you need to make sure stays up.

 

[Zepper]

One for external network like cable or DSL modem (low speed) and the other for local (home) network perhaps at gigabit speed. And as mentioned above

.bh.

 

[fr]

My Xbox 360 connects through my PC.

 

[JackMDS]

"Why do higher end motherboards have 2 Lan connectors"?

Because it cost few cents more to put a second NIC and it sounds Good for marketing purposes.

Over 95% of consumer computers have No need for the second NIC.

The most prevalent question I, how I combine the two to get twice the "Speed".

The answer is, you can Not Team/bond two NICs using Entry Level Hardware and client OS.

You can Team with special switches and using Real Server OS.

 

[Throckmorton]

I'm pretty sure you can't bond two internet connections.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: ForumMaster
so that you can connect to two different networks? also, it can allow teaming which you can either use for fault tolernace or to combine the two and get a 2Gb connection.

1. Fault tolerance is never needed for a home environment when it comes to a NIC.
2. No, you cannot get 2Gb. It's impossible to achieve even 1Gbps speeds on a home network and you cannot combine the two for file transfers.

Originally posted by: Glavinsolo
Think of it like Raid

Raid 1, 5 - reliability, fault tolerance, disaster recovery
Raid 0 - Performance

Teaming - Fault tolerance, one nic dies etc.
Load Balance - With 2 cables attached you can set %'s as to who has more work to do split from 100%
Faster Speed - Get 2 cable modems or 1 cable modem and 1 dsl/fios modem and connect both to the pc, set the one with the highest bandwidth to take 75% and the lowest 25% or any other config

It's quite nice if you run a web/file etc server that you need to make sure stays up.

It's nothing like RAID at all. Rarely will an onboard NIC die. You'll never see high percentage use of gigabit connections in a home evironment. The faster speed thing cannot be done within Windows. That would have to be router controlled.

The only reason, as nVIDIA advertised way back with their first chipset releases, is for Internet Connection Sharing.

 

[0roo0roo]

with more nas becoming cheaper, fast connection is good. having dual connect makes it sorta future proof

 

[Deleted member 4644]

I think it's a very stupid feature. I would rather have more USB ports or better audio.

I think the ONLY valid reason is that you can set up a computer with dual ports to be a router that has good security because you can isolate the two networks.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
with more nas becoming cheaper, fast connection is good. having dual connect makes it sorta future proof

Why not have the NAS connected to a gigabit switch? Sort of makes sense if you want to share it on your LAN don't you think? If the PC with the dual NIC is turned off then nobody can access the NAS.

There is no future in dual NIC. It's just a gimmick. My old Asus A8N32-SLI has that and I had one disabled in the BIOS. Most home users are also switching to wireless so it makes dual NIC even more worthless.

 

[Ika]

I'd appreciate two LAN ports as a college student. One port could be connected to the wall connection and the other could be to a wired network or a crossover cable to transfer stuff (trivial, I know...).

 

[mrred]

I love my dual NIC. One computer is using the secondary port for internet sharing, and my other computer uses its secondary port for a 2nd internet connection (I switch between connections half-way through the month so that I don't go over my monthly limit on dsl or cable)

 

[Nocturnal]

At work we have two networks. One is the customer and the other is the internal. I have both connected to my motherboard so that I can access files on the customer and internal network at the same time. If and when I don't need to do something on either, I'll disable it through Control Panel.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: mrred
I love my dual NIC. One computer is using the secondary port for internet sharing, and my other computer uses its secondary port for a 2nd internet connection (I switch between connections half-way through the month so that I don't go over my monthly limit on dsl or cable)

Is paying for two broadband subscriptions really cheaper than "going over" or upgrading one of them to higher limits or an unlimited plan?

 

[Deleted member 4644]

Originally posted by: crimson117

Originally posted by: mrred
I love my dual NIC. One computer is using the secondary port for internet sharing, and my other computer uses its secondary port for a 2nd internet connection (I switch between connections half-way through the month so that I don't go over my monthly limit on dsl or cable)

Is paying for two broadband subscriptions really cheaper than "going over" or upgrading one of them to higher limits or an unlimited plan?

If I had to guess he is either in europe, or, more likely, he is one of "those people" who is downloading literally 24/7 and thus drawing a lot of negative attention toward himeself

 

[JackMDS]

Better usage of two Internet connections can be done by using inexpensive DualWAN Router.

Combining two Internet Connections - http://www.ezlan.net/loadbalance.html

 

[mrred]

Originally posted by: Deleted member 4644

Originally posted by: crimson117

Originally posted by: mrred
I love my dual NIC. One computer is using the secondary port for internet sharing, and my other computer uses its secondary port for a 2nd internet connection (I switch between connections half-way through the month so that I don't go over my monthly limit on dsl or cable)

Is paying for two broadband subscriptions really cheaper than "going over" or upgrading one of them to higher limits or an unlimited plan?

If I had to guess he is either in europe, or, more likely, he is one of "those people" who is downloading literally 24/7 and thus drawing a lot of negative attention toward himeself

I'm in Canada, and for some stupid reason Telus wants to charge $3 for each extra gigabyte downloaded, even though the main plan is $35 for 60gigs. Makes a lot of sense eh?

Getting cable as a secondary connection for $45 / 100GB is definitely more cost-effective in my case.

As for that dual-wan router... how do you know which IP to use for gaming / remote desktop etc? Maybe you can just use either?

I like my setup. It has worked perfectly. Hooray for dual-LAN ports.

OH! Another thing is that with the dual ports, I can use a cheap gigabit switch for fast transfers between PCs (which I'm doing constantly) instead of shelling out for an expensive gigabit router (at least last time I checked, they were very expensive).

just my 2c