Dual gigabit LAN possibilties?

[Reaper_NZ]

Well i was wondering if there was any way to take advantage of having two gigabit network controllers.

 

For example, maybe making them into one so you can use two internet connections.

 

Or maybe have one do the downloading and one do the uploading?

 

Or any other possibilities?

[jumpman]

If you have 2 internet connections...lets say, 2 ethernet internet conections, then you could use load balancing and use both at the same time...but honestly...it sucks. You're better of with some kick as ISP.

 

What you can do is use one for the internet connection, and the other to connect with another comp in your house, with a crossover cable, so its 1000mbs. A lot faster than 100mbs.

 

Sorry for my bad english.

[zkissane]

We laugh at Ted Stevens calling the Internet "a series of tubes" but it can be a decent analogy in some instances.

 

Imagine you've got two pumps that can pump water at 1,000 liters per minute (like your computer's two 1Gb ethernet ports). You have pipes in your house that can accomodate 1,000 liters of water per minute (like the Cat5 ethernet cabling around your house), so any time you use either one of those pumps you can saturate your house's capacity. Imagine you have a pipe from your house to a big water exchange facility (like your ISP) but that pipe can only accomodate 10 liters of water per minute. Even if you use both of your pumps, you will never get more than 10 liters per minute out of your house to the exchange. Similarly, if you have 1 computer with 2 ports of 1 Gbps Ethernet, and an ISP connection of only 10Mbps, you will never be able to send/receive more than 10 Mbps to/from your ISP.

 

Having 2 ISP's with each NIC hooked up to one will sort of help, but not really. First, XP Home and Pro don't really load balance network connections. They usually just pick one and use it exclusively. Second, even if we pretend that XP will load balance, the Internet is basically a point-to-point network, so any sites that you connect to with both ISPs will simply assume that it's two different computers and will send the same data, which is redundant. In other words, suppose that you have AT&T as ISP 1, and your local cable company as ISP 2. If you try to connect to DFI-Street with both, the Street server will simply assume that the computer hitting it from AT&T's network is one computer, and computer on the cable company's network as another, independent computer and will send both the same data (this example neglects some other goings on as far as the OS is concerned as well). The only way you would really see a benefit here is to download content concurrently from 2 different providers using the two ISP connections (which again, assumes XP will load balance, and it assumes that at least one of the providers would saturate the bandwidth from at least one of your ISP's).

 

Finally, suppose you did have a connection to your ISP that's greater than or equal to 2 Gbps. To use both NICs on your computer to saturate that connection requires something called channel bonding, which requires specialized NICs, drivers, and switches, all of which are prohibitively expensive for the home user.

[Reaper_NZ]

If you have 2 internet connections...lets say, 2 ethernet internet conections, then you could use load balancing and use both at the same time...but honestly...it sucks. You're better of with some kick as ISP.

 

What you can do is use one for the internet connection, and the other to connect with another comp in your house, with a crossover cable, so its 1000mbs. A lot faster than 100mbs.

 

Sorry for my bad english.

 

Kick butt ISP in New Zealand? Wish me luck.

 

Well it was just a thought.

 

But i could get two internet connections, say, one with good speeds but low cap, and one with alright speeds but unlimited download. I could game on one while downloading on the other, right?

[MACarter02]

best thing you can use them for is networking. like nas, or comp to comp type stuff. or lan partying.

[Reaper_NZ]

best thing you can use them for is networking. like nas, or comp to comp type stuff. or lan partying.

 

Whats nas? I know one guy at a LAN was running two DC++'s

[radodrill]

Whats nas? I know one guy at a LAN was running two DC++'s

 

NAS == Network Attached Storage

 

I.e. if you don't have a router you could connect one ethernet port to the internet and another computer (or several PCs via a switch or a NAS unit) to the other port and set up internet connection sharing between them.

[n_w95482]

What you can do is use one for the internet connection, and the other to connect with another comp in your house, with a crossover cable, so its 1000mbs. A lot faster than 100mbs.

 

That's exactly what I do with my computer. The Marvell port goes to my P3 box via GigE crossover (I use that machine as a file server/file backup), and the other one goes to my router. I told Windows to bridge the two ports so the P3 can go online and all of the computers on my network can access it directly .