Dual NICs on motherboards - Purpose?

sitheris

sitheris

[H]ard|Gawd
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I've seen a lot of these new motherboards that have 2 on-board NICs...just wondering what the purpose of this is? Is there someway to get 2x the bandwidth?
 
Isnt windows vista supposed to support multiple internet connections :confused:
 
I think its for, if you are connecting to a LAN and the internet at the same time, or connected to 2 LANS at the same time. So say if you are connected to the Internet on one NIC and downloading a big file and then you are on a LAN wanting to transfer a file. Instead of tapping in the NIC that the internet is on, and lower the bandwidth, you put the LAN transfer on its own NIC and get full speed for both the transfer of the document through the LAN and the download of the file through the internet.
 
I think they're designed for people who share a connection, one for WAN, the other to another PC or LAN. Never made much sense to me anyway, and since most are a very cheap implementation I always used a 3Com PCI card anway :cool:
 
Its definetly a LAN and WAN siuation (so they say), one port to connect to the internet, the other port out to a hub or another PC to share the connection with a friend.

I think the real reason its there tho is because its extremely cheap to add and looks good on paper, i mean c'mon, 2 boards perform the same, cost the same, why not nab the one with dual lan? So of course now all higherend ones have dual lan.
 
I use both of them on my comp. Internet connected directly to my computer, then my other computer to this one with a crossover cable.
 
lol,
I originally thought people use them to connect to two internets. Like you order one DSL (SBC) and one cable (Comcast) and connect them both up in order to allow you to do more things at the same time. Like, use the DSL to download files while playing internet games on the Cable connection
 
{NcsO}ReichstaG said:
lol,
I originally thought people use them to connect to two internets. Like you order one DSL (SBC) and one cable (Comcast) and connect them both up in order to allow you to do more things at the same time. Like, use the DSL to download files while playing internet games on the Cable connection
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You can do that with one NIC, you just need a spiffy router to do it for you (which would probably be a better decision). I've always felt that the reason to have two NIC's is because they are probably connected to different chipsets, have different routes as far as bandwidth and IRQ goes, so if your system is maxxed out or has a problem with one NIC, the other nic is available. I know that on one of my systems one NIC doesn't work very well for some reason, but the other one works awsome. I'm sure somebody out there has it the total opposite.
 
It's for connecting to different networks, no more no less.

You don't magically gain more bandwidth by plugging both into the same network either. You may seperate the connections but 100Mbps or 1Gbps twice over is still just that...
 
paintb4707 said:
redundancy
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Took the words right out of my mouth.

However you can also use it to connect to two networks. In most of my production servers we have at least 2 nic cards incase one goes bad. In a couple that were bought before i started working here we have 4 nics in them.
 
I used the 2 NICs on my K8N Neo2 as a gateway for my network before getting a router.
 
ICS of various sorts. Some even have a built in router in their BIOS (such as some nVidia nForce boards)
 
It's to make people ask questions like this. It only costs the manufacturer $2 or $3 AT MOST to add on that 2nd NIC. But all the n00bs and neophytes out in the world see a board with 2 NICs and assume it's better and buy that, resulting in higher sales. Primarily it's a psych game.

Will you ever use the 2nd NIC? Probably not, but it's there if you need it.
 
I have two Nics I my Motherboard A7N8X Deluxe 3Com or Nvidia (Reatek) Which one is better to use?
 
Also very helpful for doing Cisco labs so you don't have to keep moving the cabling + changing the config of your ethernet card.
 
It makes it very much neater to make a router, since you can get away with no cards at all.
I use two ISA 10 Mbit-cards in my router right now (and a PCI graphics card). Having everything integrated would make it much smaller. The ideal hardware would be a fanless Via mini-ITX - board with two NICs, but my trusty P2-300 will do for a while longer. :D

edit: I don't like nVidia NICs, btw. I've seen or had assorted kinds of trouble with them, so I'd recommend 3com instead if you already have both.
 
ChingChang said:
I use both of them on my comp. Internet connected directly to my computer, then my other computer to this one with a crossover cable.
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Same
 
HHunt said:
edit: I don't like nVidia NICs, btw. I've seen or had assorted kinds of trouble with them, so I'd recommend 3com instead if you already have both.
Click to expand...

intel nics > *
 
HHunt said:
edit: I don't like nVidia NICs, btw. I've seen or had assorted kinds of trouble with them, so I'd recommend 3com instead if you already have both.
Click to expand...

The nVidia one on the NF2 is better. Uses virtually no CPU where as the 3com one does. It's also autosensing so you do not need a crossover cable if you are connecting two PC's together. The 3Com was put on there for brand recognition for the corp market. Too bad it never panned out that way.

More info here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1731&p=4

1) The 3Com MAC supports IP, TCP and UDP Checksum offloads while the NVIDIA MAC does not.

2) The 3Com drivers include diagnostics software for DOS and Windows (a huge plus with the corporate community) while the NVIDIA drivers do not have that functionality yet.

3) The NVIDIA MAC supports interrupt moderation resulting in lower CPU utilization, the 3Com MAC does not.
 
Met-AL said:
The nVidia one on the NF2 is better. Uses virtually no CPU where as the 3com one does. It's also autosensing so you do not need a crossover cable if you are connecting two PC's together. The 3Com was put on there for brand recognition for the corp market. Too bad it never panned out that way.

More info here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1731&p=4

1) The 3Com MAC supports IP, TCP and UDP Checksum offloads while the NVIDIA MAC does not.
2) The 3Com drivers include diagnostics software for DOS and Windows (a huge plus with the corporate community) while the NVIDIA drivers do not have that functionality yet.
3) The NVIDIA MAC supports interrupt moderation resulting in lower CPU utilization, the 3Com MAC does not.
Click to expand...

Right. As I would probably run FreeBSD on it if I did anything that generated a lot of traffic, the tables might shift a bit. IIRC the 3com drivers support polling (as opposed to interrupt driven mode), which negates 3). The nv drivers are, to be nice, "less mature" as well.
Assuming that there aren't any notable bugs left in the chipset (they mention fixing one), it should be enough to make the 3com chip the better choice.

Assuming windows, however, you're probably right.
(Did nvidia get over the bug where enabling some offloading caused abysmal performance in WoW?)
 
Others have stated this already but the most common use for dual NIC's is teaming, not ICS or routing. Most big brand NIC's, Broadcom, Intel, even some realtek based cards support Adaptive Load Balancing or some form of fault tolerance.

But regardless - you can do whatever you want with your two NIC's... they're yours. =)
 
HHunt said:
It makes it very much neater to make a router, since you can get away with no cards at all.
I use two ISA 10 Mbit-cards in my router right now (and a PCI graphics card). Having everything integrated would make it much smaller. The ideal hardware would be a fanless Via mini-ITX - board with two NICs, but my trusty P2-300 will do for a while longer. :D

edit: I don't like nVidia NICs, btw. I've seen or had assorted kinds of trouble with them, so I'd recommend 3com instead if you already have both.
Click to expand...

I generally prefer 3COM or Intel...but some of the nVidia based NICs (it depends on the brand of motherboard, how they were implemented by the brand into the south bridge/MCP of the nForce chipsets. There were several different variations of this. The ones properly implemented were OUTSTANDING in performance, especially in latency, I had seen quite a few tests in regards to pings in online games, in controlled environments, done some myself, and the nVidia NICs were appreciably lower in latency than trusty Intel Pro and 3COM 90x series NICs. (which are my usual favorites).

Via chipsets however... Blech...can't pay me to use them.
:p
 
Orinthical said:
Others have stated this already but the most common use for dual NIC's is teaming, not ICS or routing. Most big brand NIC's, Broadcom, Intel, even some realtek based cards support Adaptive Load Balancing or some form of fault tolerance.)
Click to expand...

How common is that with consumer based boards? The statement "most common use for dual NICs". We're talking about consumer based boards here, not Compaq Teaming or Cisco teaming enterprise gear. And based on the manufacturers advertisements for these consumer boards, even they say "2x NICs for ICS", and many of them such as the nForce boards have NAT/Router features built into the BIOS...the usual web admin almost like a DStink/Stinksys/Nutgear router.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
How common is that with consumer based boards? The statement "most common use for dual NICs". We're talking about consumer based boards here, not Compaq Teaming or Cisco teaming enterprise gear. And based on the manufacturers advertisements for these consumer boards, even they say "2x NICs for ICS", and many of them such as the nForce boards have NAT/Router features built into the BIOS...the usual web admin almost like a DStink/Stinksys/Nutgear router.
Click to expand...

Very common, especially when the board has dual intel or broadcom nic's. If they are mismatched then you may still be able to do something with them depending on the type of NIC they are.

And from experience with intel cards on consumer level switches you don't necessarily need a cisco or compaq/hp switch to notice a marked improvement in bandwidth.

I'm simply answering the question - "Dual NICs on motherboard - purpose?" - the most common use for them is load balancing or just plain failover redundancy. Period. I'm looking at the large picture of the purpose for having dual NICs on a motherboard, not just what the latest consumer fad may be.

And the last line of my post said, "It's yours... do with it what you want." If you want to use them for ICS, go for it.
 
Another question - what's the point of turning a PC into a router...why not just buy an actual router?

/network noob
 
sitheris said:
Another question - what's the point of turning a PC into a router...why not just buy an actual router?
Click to expand...

Because one can impose a process between the two networks, e.g. a firewall.
 
sitheris said:
Another question - what's the point of turning a PC into a router...why not just buy an actual router?

/network noob
Click to expand...

Guess it's just a "value-add" feature. Agree...I'd prefer having a dedicated router myself. But as someone mentioned above, the cost for a mobo maker to add a second NIC is a mere couple of dollars. And with so many people out there taking the poor approach of sharing their broadband with the various flavors of software ICS out there....they see this as valued added. Having them set as router providing NAT is a better method (IMO)...still a valued added feature, better IMO than software ICS, for those who won't go purchase a router.
 
Orinthical said:
Very common, especially when the board has dual intel or broadcom nic's. If they are mismatched then you may still be able to do something with them depending on the type of NIC they are.

And from experience with intel cards on consumer level switches you don't necessarily need a cisco or compaq/hp switch to notice a marked improvement in bandwidth.

I'm simply answering the question - "Dual NICs on motherboard - purpose?" - the most common use for them is load balancing or just plain failover redundancy. Period. I'm looking at the large picture of the purpose for having dual NICs on a motherboard, not just what the latest consumer fad may be.

And the last line of my post said, "It's yours... do with it what you want." If you want to use them for ICS, go for it.
Click to expand...
Whoever gets the motherboard can do all they want, but the manufacturers didn't really have a purpose set in mind (as least I don't think)... If they did, it CERTAINLY wasn't teaming or load balancing, because these boards are totally not marketed towards the server crowd. Dead horse, though.
 
Orinthical said:
I'm simply answering the question - "Dual NICs on motherboard - purpose?" - the most common use for them is load balancing or just plain failover redundancy. Period. I'm looking at the large picture of the purpose for having dual NICs on a motherboard, not just what the latest consumer fad may be.

And the last line of my post said, "It's yours... do with it what you want." If you want to use them for ICS, go for it.
Click to expand...

I guess that's were we can agree to disagree.

I've done a few "teaming" setups on servers, (IE Compaq and Cisco) but that's more on the enterprise level. Having been exposed to the enterprise/business, and small business network market for quite some time as a consultant/VAR, I've yet to see failover redundancy for NICs even take off in popularity.

I'd say the % of dual NIC boards sold out there have been sold to the consumer "do it youself" market..IE nVidia chipset mobo's, etc. And certainly AMD CPU rigs are not a high percentage share in the enterprise workstation market.

From nVidia's own website describing their DualLan technology.
"Connectivity: With DualNet™, the industry’s only dual networking architecture to support simultaneous local-area network (LAN) and wide-area network (WAN) connections"

Also taking a peek at the web admin of the Active Armor firewall technology (part of DualNet/DualLan) nVidia implemented, it's geared at running as a router, WAN/LAN NICs.

Bottom line, I certainly don't use ICS, I hate software methods of sharing, unless it's Microsofts ISA Server.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I guess that's were we can agree to disagree.

I've done a few "teaming" setups on servers, (IE Compaq and Cisco) but that's more on the enterprise level. Having been exposed to the enterprise/business, and small business network market for quite some time as a consultant/VAR, I've yet to see failover redundancy for NICs even take off in popularity.

I'd say the % of dual NIC boards sold out there have been sold to the consumer "do it youself" market..IE nVidia chipset mobo's, etc. And certainly AMD CPU rigs are not a high percentage share in the enterprise workstation market.

From nVidia's own website describing their DualLan technology.
"Connectivity: With DualNet™, the industry’s only dual networking architecture to support simultaneous local-area network (LAN) and wide-area network (WAN) connections"

Also taking a peek at the web admin of the Active Armor firewall technology (part of DualNet/DualLan) nVidia implemented, it's geared at running as a router, WAN/LAN NICs.

Bottom line, I certainly don't use ICS, I hate software methods of sharing, unless it's Microsofts ISA Server.
Click to expand...

You're like the SMTP Relay of my mind. without the spam takeover. :)
 
Orinthical said:
Others have stated this already but the most common use for dual NIC's is teaming, not ICS or routing. Most big brand NIC's, Broadcom, Intel, even some realtek based cards support Adaptive Load Balancing or some form of fault tolerance.

But regardless - you can do whatever you want with your two NIC's... they're yours. =)
Click to expand...
What evidence do you have for this? And what purpose would the average user have for Ether channel operations?

Having dual NICs on a system board, especially one with a build in hardware firewall, screams of one Internet and one LAN connection.
 
Obviously so they can just stick a title on the motherboard like "Deluxe, Platinum, pro, ultimate, elite, ultra" on it. Because it has dual LAN. But in all seriousness, some people probably need it for the previous reasons stated.
 
feigned said:
It's for connecting to different networks, no more no less.

You don't magically gain more bandwidth by plugging both into the same network either. You may seperate the connections but 100Mbps or 1Gbps twice over is still just that...
Click to expand...

VLANs , proper switch gear, and routers are for connecting 2 networks. Not dual NIC's ... ever heard of 802.3ad, 802.1q? Link aggregation on a nice switch with proper 802.3ad support = redundancy and traffice teaming. Rudementary understanding does not make your answer intelligent either. Please sit while the grown-ups talk.
 
HHunt said:
Right. As I would probably run FreeBSD on it if I did anything that generated a lot of traffic, the tables might shift a bit. IIRC the 3com drivers support polling (as opposed to interrupt driven mode), which negates 3). The nv drivers are, to be nice, "less mature" as well.
Assuming that there aren't any notable bugs left in the chipset (they mention fixing one), it should be enough to make the 3com chip the better choice.

Assuming windows, however, you're probably right.
(Did nvidia get over the bug where enabling some offloading caused abysmal performance in WoW?)
Click to expand...

Of course. The statement "nVidia being the better of the two" only works in the Windows world. From my limited experience with BSD by using m0n0wall, if you want the best performing NIC, it's Intel.

I can not quote exact numbers and I do not plan on retesting, but I did try both the nVidia and 3Com NF2 NIC's out on WinXP, and the CPU load is considerably lower using the nVidia NIC. Nothing to get too excited about, but if you are gaming and every little bit of CPU processing power counts, then nVidia is your better choice.
 
sitheris said:
Another question - what's the point of turning a PC into a router...why not just buy an actual router?

/network noob
Click to expand...

because a soho router sucks compared to a properly built *nix router
 
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