load balancing between nics in win2k3

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ziddey

Supreme [H]ardness
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hi. at my college, i'm allowed up to 3 (maybe 4) ips for free, each of which comes with 2gb of transfer per month.

i have two ips at the moment, one for my computer, and one for my laptop. i was wondering...

if i got two more nics for my computer, and got two more ips, how would i go about load balancing them? i figure this way, ill be able to use 3x2gb=6gb of transfer instead of the 2gb that im currently allowed on my computer

thanks!
 
ziddey said:
hi. at my college, i'm allowed up to 3 (maybe 4) ips for free, each of which comes with 2gb of transfer per month.

i have two ips at the moment, one for my computer, and one for my laptop. i was wondering...

if i got two more nics for my computer, and got two more ips, how would i go about load balancing them? i figure this way, ill be able to use 3x2gb=6gb of transfer instead of the 2gb that im currently allowed on my computer

thanks!
Click to expand...


two things need to happen

the software must be able to trunk the nic's AND the switch has to be able to tell that those two nics are trunked so it can use it.
 
figgie said:
two things need to happen

the software must be able to trunk the nic's AND the switch has to be able to tell that those two nics are trunked so it can use it.
Click to expand...
nono im not trying to trunk them

because that would essentially just make it seem like i have one nic and one ip, and thus only 2gb

i want to keep them separate and just have windows be able to randomly pick one to use, maybe on a rotating basis.
 
You can't do that unless you start constantly modifying your routing table to choose which interface to send traffic out on. Its like saying you need to make more phone calls from your house, and order another line, but you are the only person using them. You can only talk on one phone at a time, even though you have 2 lines coming into your house. You can constantly switch between the two phones, but you can never make 2 phone calls at once.
 
ColdZero said:
You can't do that unless you start constantly modifying your routing table to choose which interface to send traffic out on. Its like saying you need to make more phone calls from your house, and order another line, but you are the only person using them. You can only talk on one phone at a time, even though you have 2 lines coming into your house.
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thats totally fine by me

could would i go about modifying routing tables in windows? i could periodically do that based on usage
 
ziddey said:
thats totally fine by me

could would i go about modifying routing tables in windows? i could periodically do that based on usage
Click to expand...

Just enable/disable the network connections from the network control panel.
 
What I ment by:

You can't do that unless you start constantly modifying your routing table to choose which interface to send traffic out on.

Is:

Thats a really bad idea and not practical.

However, if you want to start messing with yoru routing tables, which I suggest you don't, read:

this

and

open up a command line and type:

route

and it will bring up the route help stuff.

Again, this is a bad idea, and you aren't going to gain anything from it.

A better idea would be to just have different things listening on different stuff. Like an FTP server that listens on one IP and the other IP is for all your normal traffic.
 
There is a way. Load balance with NicExpress. It does trunking BUT the switch has to support it. And it DOES load balancing, as in if one nic dies, all the connections go to the other nic, OR if a cable get unplug , traffic goes to the other nic. http://www.falconstor.com/ipmetrics.asp


edit: I just figured out what your saying, Ignore the 1st part.

There are routers that enable you to conenect to 2 conections at the asme time and load balance them, but kinda pricy. They were used to trunk two cable or dsl conections together and utlilze both. Dont know how its works, but it does.
 
the-one1 said:
There is a way. Load balance with NicExpress. It does trunking BUT the switch has to support it. And it DOES load balancing, as in if one nic dies, all the connections go to the other nic, OR if a cable get unplug , traffic goes to the other nic. http://www.falconstor.com/ipmetrics.asp


edit: I just figured out what your saying, Ignore the 1st part.

There are routers that enable you to conenect to 2 conections at the asme time and load balance them, but kinda pricy. They were used to trunk two cable or dsl conections together and utlilze both. Dont know how its works, but it does.
Click to expand...

with nic express if the switch does not support trunking then it will switch between nics randomly, if that is what you want it to do, there is no advantage, both line will still be connected to the same place
 
k1pp3r said:
with nic express if the switch does not support trunking then it will switch between nics randomly, if that is what you want it to do, there is no advantage, both line will still be connected to the same place
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i think thats what im looking for

i mean i dont have a cap anyway so its not like im looking to get faster speeds

and even if i was, id be connecting two nics to the same switch, so it really wouldnt help much

its just that per nic (per ip, per mac), i get 2gb of transfer per month

and i get get multiple ips

so if i can get multiple nics in my pc and have my pc rotate among the nics, so that my bandwidth usage is evenly distributed, i can have 2gb x 3nics = 6gbs to use per month
 
But with nic express, both nics use the same IP. So that wont work. And also it cost too much to be worth it. Just change your IP/nic every week or so to use up that IP limit.
 
the-one1 said:
But with nic express, both nics use the same IP. So that wont work. And also it cost too much to be worth it. Just change your IP/nic every week or so to use up that IP limit.
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it works with one ip, i have done it before
 
Yeah. it uses one IP, thats why it wont benefit him, he wants to use all his IPs so that they can be used up.
 
Uhhhh, so why not just use one nic until you reach your 2gb limit and then switch the cable to the second nic?
 
ColdZero said:
Uhhhh, so why not just use one nic until you reach your 2gb limit and then switch the cable to the second nic?
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id like to serve various apps on different nics

for example, bind iis to one ip, file sharing to another, and have web surfing cross between all three or something like that
 
ziddey said:
id like to serve various apps on different nics

for example, bind iis to one ip, file sharing to another, and have web surfing cross between all three or something like that
Click to expand...

i hope you can program, because i don't know of a way to do that, nor do i think you can
 
First of all, if you run Windows, good luck with doing all that.

You can do IIS on one NIC/IP set up pretty easily. Assign the IP to one NIC. In IIS when you create the site, bind it to that IP.
You can "bind" file sharing to another by simply telling people you're sharing out of that NIC's IP. But otherwise I don't think you can force file sharing on just the one IP. Windows isn't that sophisticated, especially if both IPs are on the same subnet. Hell, even if they weren't, you'd still be file sharing on both.

As for also load-balancing on the way out of your box so that you can web surf with it balanced, sorry, but I don't think that will be possible either.

I have not seen NICExpress before, but if you can do that, then perhaps that might work for you. But that really seems like it's messing with Windows a lot and putting it on a somewhat tenuous footing...
 
Ugh, yes you can bind seperate apps to each IP. Have IIS listening on one IP only and have FTP or whatever listening on the other. You can even have different sites in IIS listening on different IPs.

Windows isn't that sophisticated? Just remove filesharing from one of the nics protocol stack, then....gasp, filesharing won't work on it. You can do kinda what you want in windows without a problem. Going for total load balancing is not going to happen because you need switch support to do that.
 
ColdZero said:
Ugh, yes you can bind seperate apps to each IP. Have IIS listening on one IP only and have FTP or whatever listening on the other. You can even have different sites in IIS listening on different IPs.

Windows isn't that sophisticated? Just remove filesharing from one of the nics protocol stack, then....gasp, filesharing won't work on it. You can do kinda what you want in windows without a problem. Going for total load balancing is not going to happen because you need switch support to do that.
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that's pretty much what i figured :\

thanks for all the help!
 
Nicexpress will do everthing that you need it to do. it even works with my $70 cheap ass linksys cable dsl router...... You will not have a problem implimenting this using the 2 network connections. I would give it a try what the hell you know, they have I think a 15 day or a 30 day trial so what have you got to loose. I used nic express when my servers were running windows. But I have now since moved them to linux :D much easier. :) Also if I am not mistaken in server 2000 and server 2003 microsoft included a NLB protocol for load balancing... I would google around and see if you can find any info on it..... google for windows NLB or Windows Network Load Balancing
 
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