performance difference between dual port and single port?

[imzjustplayin]

Is there a performance difference between dual port nics and single port nics? (Talking about intel nics)

Also can someone explain to me some uses for a quad port nic? Or even multiple ones? Turn your computer into a switch??

 

[ring.of.steel]

what do you mean by that? they show up as two individual ports in network connections...
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[imzjustplayin]

what do you mean by that? they show up as two individual ports in network connections...
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I know but it would seem like there would be a performance penalty of some sort using multiport ethernet cards over using multiple single port ethernet cards...

 

[ring.of.steel]

oh right, it should be about the same if is a decent card. it depends on the make and model also.

edit: just seen you are talking about intel nics. I think the idea of multi port nic's is to save slots on the motherboard. For the price of a switch you might aswell buy one but if you plugged multiple computers in it should give them ip addresses if you are running a dhcp server. supposedly it should work as a switch.
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[ktwebb]

Router. In windows specifically to setup a RRAS servver with multiple segments. Any number of Linux distros and firewall/router apps that could utilize a multiport NIC. As long as the onboard processor was worthy, there'd be no performance hit. If the load is off'd to the box, then in theory you'd see an impact but if your buying a 4 port NIC, assumably their PU onboard that card is tuned to handle load without moving any of it to the server.