whats the deal with dual gigabit lan?

[CheeseMan42]

here's the thing about teaming: It will be benificial ONLY if you are saturating the current gigabit port during file transfers. Being 100mb/s, it's hard to come anywhere close to the bandwidth available on one port. The only way it would be useful would be if you are running a server with many workstations needing to access files from that box.

 

So as stated above, the only really good use for that 2nd port is to configure a shared internet connection with another computer that would connect to it. And then, the box with the ports would have to be on for the other to be connected to the internet. So IMO, dual gigabit is a gimmick and is very unnecessary.

 

Gigabit is 1000mb/s. Just thought I'd point that out.

[psycho_terror]

i currently use a wireless internet connection, and connect to XBOX live by connecting my 360 to my ethernet port.

 

if i had dual ethernet i would connect my PS2 or another console up to it too.

[DLS2008]

The dual gigabit ports on desktop motherboards is simply a gimmick and it fools a lot of people. You won't notice a single improvement by using both unless you are reaching 1000+ mb/s... Unless you're running a server that has many clients accessing it and using a lot of bandwidth, it won't help. Teaming won't do you squat.

[Verran]

I can just see this now. Running two ethernet cables to every computer to 'reduce lag' becomes the newest gimmick since 'SLI memory'.

 

It would seem to me that this 'teaming' would only benefit you if you're pulling more than a single gigabit connection can handle. Do people really understand how incredibly unlikely that is? You're certainly not going to get that kind of bandwidth from your ISP. And even with huge file transfers over your network it can still only go as fast as your hard drive can serve the data up. I mean maybe with 8-way stripe sets on each end of the file transfer you might need this... MAYBE. It just seems to me like one of those things that looks great on paper and a lot of people will get really excited about, but really it doesn't do anything.

[PyRo_MaNiAc]

Having multiple Ethernet ports is a way to make a cheap server for a small business environment where you either have multiple vlans, a firewall IE. ISA or pfsense (one for an outside connection one for inside), VMWare (if your like me and run on average 6 VM's on a box you tend to acquire a lot of different network paths and addresses), and or sharing connections the poor mans way to LAN party .

[xPETEZx]

The server in my Sig is running a Teamed network connection.

 

Intel provide a little button on the config of the team, to test if the switches supports teaming. (Trunking) and the one its connected to is a Netgear Managed rack switch, which does.

 

So the server now has a 2G connection. And its useful.

 

There are about 8 other computers in the house, all connected over 1G, which watch films, move data etc from the server the whole time.

 

So far, its worked great!

 

But, Its not for everyone. I think on gaming/desktop boards, it is totally useless.

[Andrewr05]

Yeah, a LARGE home network (15+ computers/network connected devices) sucking HD content like Paris Hilton sucks the cock... err.. cash probably wouldn't even saturate dual let alone quad...

[Zertz]

Gigabit is 1000mb/s. Just thought I'd point that out.

 

bits and bytes

 

Gigabit LAN is actually 125MB/s peak

[Waco]

bits and bytes

 

Gigabit LAN is actually 125MB/s peak

Beat me to it.

 

I've used trunked NICs on my fileservers before, it makes a huge difference when you've got an excess of HDD bandwidth and a single line is holding you up. That, and it's trivial to run completely separate networks that can't see each other but can access the same files on the same machine.

 

It certainly does not reduce latency at all. In fact, it usually increases network latency to and from a single host.

Edited March 3, 2009 by Thewacokid

[Zertz]

It certainly does not reduce latency at all. In fact, it usually increases network latency to and from a single host.

 

Ideally it wouldn't increase, but if you need the bandwidth, I'm guessing the extra latency is most likely not a huge deal.

 

Kind of useless in a small home network though since chances you either won't need the bandwidth or all the data is going to be traveling to a single host who has a single cable anyway.