2 NICs in a PC?

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cgrant26

2[H]4U
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Oct 23, 2003
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Besides regular bridging, is there any way to use 2 NICs in a single system to increase network performance? I just read a thread in the case modding forum where a guy built a router into his computer. The one thing I was curious about was that he installed two NICs and said one was for data out and the other for data in. Assuming he's not talking about bridging, how can this be done? Is is possible in a windows XP environment?

FYI, I'm using a Netgear RT314 router/gateway and there are 4 computers on my network.
 
I don't see what you stand to gain fromt this. your NIC is alreadyway faster than your internet connection. And as for transfer files betwen pc's you could just go gigabit enthernet and get a lot beter gains.
 
cgrant26 said:
Assuming he's not talking about bridging, how can this be done? Is is possible in a windows XP environment?
Click to expand...

he's talking about bridging, or at the very least, windows ics.
 
That sounds like a router to me.

Aside from acting as a router, there isn't much to be gained from this. I believe it's called bonding, where you can setup two nics to act as one, but for general internet use it's worthless, and for file serving, it's not much better.

Go with gigabit ethernet, with jumbo packets, and you'll be much happier.

Now, if you had two internet connections ( dsl/cable ), you can setup two nics to load share the connections on the router. It's not fun, nor pleasant, but it can be done ( with linux ).
 
yes, it can be done.

servers usually come with two interfaces and when they are both used on the same network it is known as teaming. pretty sure there is software on the servers though which handles this. tbh, this is used more for resilience than throughput.

if you have another nic just lying around then fine give it a go, otherwise i would just get a gig card. however, unless this is a nic to nic link between two machines then youll also have to get a gig switch though 'home-use' ones can be had reasonably cheaply now.

hth.
 
teaming, trunking, bridging, so on, basicly making 2 NIC's act like one. I think WinXP calls it mac bridging, but it can be a pita really, and unless you have some major bandwidth needs, your not going to gain much I don't think. Linux also supports it and I believe calls it bridging but I would have to check again.
 
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