What is the point of two Ethernet ports on my motherboard?

[Aquinus]

I always thought you could have one from router to PC then other port go to something like an xbox.

You can, that's call a network bridge.

 

[Phusius]

That is neat, I didn't know that thanks Aquinus and Delta for asking. I might do that with my PS3 instead of using the wireless now. xD

 

[Kreij]

I have one NIC port set for local LAN subnet and the other set for 192.168.1.x
That way if I need to replace a router or other device that comes with the default network set to 192.168.1.1 (which many of them do), I don't have to change settings on my machine to reconfigure the device to work with the existing LAN.

 

[Aquinus]

That is neat, I didn't know that thanks Aquinus and Delta for asking. I might do that with my PS3 instead of using the wireless now. xD

If you don't know how, this might help: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Create-a-network-bridge

 

[Mussels]

That is neat, I didn't know that thanks Aquinus and Delta for asking. I might do that with my PS3 instead of using the wireless now. xD

you cant do port forwards, and your PC would need to be on for the PS3 to get internet. theres a reason its not commonly used.

 

[Aquinus]

you cant do port forwards, and your PC would need to be on for the PS3 to get internet. theres a reason its not commonly used.

I don't know about your rig, but mine is always on.

 

[Mussels]

I don't know about your rig, but mine is always on.

waste of power and heat, constant source of noise, etc.

 

[Aquinus]

waste of power and heat, constant source of noise, etc.

That is why my machine lives in my home office, noise isn't that much of an issue because the AC is louder. Also I would rather know that I can access my rig at any time from anywhere since I develop off of it weather I'm home or not. So for my purposes, the convince factor outweighs noise, heat, and power consumption. Also just because no users are on a server, doesn't mean you shut it off.

 

[Mussels]

That is why my machine lives in my home office, noise isn't that much of an issue because the AC is louder. Also I would rather know that I can access my rig at any time from anywhere since I develop off of it weather I'm home or not. So for my purposes, the convince factor outweighs noise, heat, and power consumption. Also just because no users are on a server, doesn't mean you shut it off.

my home server is an 11W netbook. also, wake on lan.

 

[swellhunter]

VM use.

Not to revive the thread, but the number one reason there are two of these (if not) more is that the vast majority of users running a single guest OS or virtual machine want a dedicated ethernet port for that machine.

The number two reason is to run a proxy on your own network, (for safety or packet sniffing your set top boxes to hack later).

Out of band KVM over ethernet is very much a server function, and in that case the port is dedicated or becomes dedicated after an add-in module is plugged in.

This is not intended to be a necro post but nobody answered the question ? .. and people may want to know....

 

[Aquinus]

Not to revive the thread, but the number one reason there are two of these (if not) more is that the vast majority of users running a single guest OS or virtual machine want a dedicated ethernet port for that machine.

The number two reason is to run a proxy on your own network, (for safety or packet sniffing your set top boxes to hack later).

Out of band KVM over ethernet is very much a server function, and in that case the port is dedicated or becomes dedicated after an add-in module is plugged in.

This is not intended to be a necro post but nobody answered the question ? .. and people may want to know....

Hello, welcome to TPU!

I highly recommend starting a new thread since this one has been dead for several months. New problems should be posted as new threads. There is no shame in starting a new thread.

Since you are responding to a dead thread, I will just say yes. You can dedicate single network adapters to a VM like how you can dedicate a full hard drive or partition to a VM as opposed to just providing it a virtual disk.

I think this depends on implementation because more often than not a VM shouldn't be using that much resources and if it is, you may not want to be running a VM.

 

[Darr247]

Redundancy is the least plausible reason to go dual LAN by far. Chances are one port will outlive the life of the upgrade cycle. They don't easily die with heavy use like disc burners do.

At least one of the dual LAN ports has died before the motherboard on every dual port ASUS board I've bought over the last 8 years. Last summer, the second one died in my AMD 3GHz quad core machine and I had to use its only open PCI-e x1 slot (the other one's blocked off by the graphics card in the PCI-e x16 slot) for a gigabit NIC card.

 

[Mussels]

At least one of the dual LAN ports has died before the motherboard on every dual port ASUS board I've bought over the last 8 years. Last summer, the second one died in my AMD 3GHz quad core machine and I had to use its only open PCI-e x1 slot (the other one's blocked off by the graphics card in the PCI-e x16 slot) for a gigabit NIC card.

i'm glad they were useful to you, but you must have some bad wiring or bad power for them to die so often :/

also, check the dates for this thread. last post was march last year.

 

[broken pixel]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

 

[FreedomEclipse]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

Bit of a waste of time, your hub or router also needs to support this feature also to work afaik. Also makes no difference to stardard consumer general usage. So unless you have a server that needs a lot of throughput dont bother

 

[Mussels]

Bit of a waste of time, your hub or router also needs to support this feature also to work afaik. Also makes no difference to stardard consumer general usage. So unless you have a server that needs a lot of throughput dont bother

and it only works if you have multiple transfers at the same time, and then its choked past the router/managed switch anyway.

so its great if you need to download two 1Gb/s links simultaneously, but kinda useless for anything that isnt multiple high speed file transfers.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

I have tried this dual nic teaming and i didnt really see much difference...

My current MOBO supports dual teaming. I didnt see much difference because i have only 1 ISP provider. If I got two ISP's then definitely it will boost connection as NIC teaming can use two ports simultaneously.

dual LAN is also useful for file sharing within your local network wherein you can assign your one NIC for internet and one NIC for local file sharing. done that but I dont do much file sharing. but it works

 

[Mussels]

I have tried this dual nic teaming and i didnt really see much difference...

My current MOBO supports dual teaming. I didnt see much difference because i have only 1 ISP provider. If I got two ISP's then definitely it will boost connection as NIC teaming can use two ports simultaneously.

dual LAN is also useful for file sharing within your local network wherein you can assign your one NIC for internet and one NIC for local file sharing. done that but I dont do much file sharing. but it works

its no good for WAN connections. its only useful for lan.

it doesnt do load balancing or anything fancy like that, it just offers two routes for data - so instead of two 50MB/s connections you could have two 100MB/s connections, assuming they're fast enough to actually saturate two gigabit links.

this is not going to be useful for anyone on residential connections, it is NOT designed to speed up internet use and downloads.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

its no good for WAN connections. its only useful for lan.

it doesnt do load balancing or anything fancy like that, it just offers two routes for data - so instead of two 50MB/s connections you could have two 100MB/s connections, assuming they're fast enough to actually saturate two gigabit links.

this is not going to be useful for anyone on residential connections, it is NOT designed to speed up internet use and downloads.

? where did I mentioned about WAN?

oh it will be useful for residential connections. if you have two ISP provider and your dual NIC supports teaming, you can speed up your internet and downloads, etc etc....

by speed up means it will use the two different ISP provider's connection.

 

[Mussels]

? where did I mentioned about WAN?

oh it will be useful for residential connections. if you have two ISP provider and your dual NIC supports teaming, you can speed up your internet and downloads, etc etc....

by speed up means it will use the two different ISP provider's connection.

you said you could use it with two ISP's. thats WAN, and it wont work for that. you cannot use this to speed up an internet connection for the simple fact that programs (including windows) are coded to use one connection, and one connection only.

 

[JunkBear]

Just saying that the Compaq Evo D510 P4-478 had the functionality of aggregated card. You could put another Intel PCI 100 Mbps and mix them together. Not new stuff.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

you said you could use it with two ISP's. thats WAN, and it wont work for that. you cannot use this to speed up an internet connection for the simple fact that programs (including windows) are coded to use one connection, and one connection only.

hmmmm thats where the link aggregations comes into place.....

i think you misunderstood my meaning about "speed up" internet connection.....

assuming you have proper hardware for it, you can configure to have one connection for download and one connection for upload.......

you can do that with NIC teaming. in that way, a normal one NIC can ease off the load because it is working as 2 ways. upload and download. with dual NIC teaming, you can configure the NIC to work together. one for upload and one for download. in the end, it will be still one connection as you mentioned that windows are coded

i dont know about internet connections in other country but here in korea you can choose how much upload and download speed.

I have the option to get lets say a 50 mbps as minimum upload with 1 mbps download. then i will subscribe to another provider where its the other way around.....

in that way, with dual NIC teaming, i will have a 50mbps both download and upload. but why would a normal user do that? too costly plus if your other NIC stopped working, then you are Fucked......

I am happy with my connection at the moment, so didnt bite that option....

 

[remixedcat]

PFSense

Also on windows server releases you can use something called Routing and Remote Access services to make a "winrouter"

 

[Mussels]

so lets say for ease of use, you have two 10Mb by 10Mb fiber connections in a perfect world where neither one ever slows down, every download and every upload runs at maximum speed.

if you set one to up and one to down you still have... a 10/10 connection. the only way that would be of use is if you could get a 1/10 and a 10/1 connection for less than a 10/10, and link them as you mentioned.

even then things wont work right because lets say you load up a webpage and login - your upload (login) and download are going to have different IP addresses, and its not going to work. HTTPS for example will get very unhappy.


the only way this works is if you treat it like two computers on two internet connections - each program/PC can be locked to one connection and theoretically get higher maximum speeds, but in that case why are you doing it on one PC?

this is why earlier i said it makes sense for a large file server that may need multiple connections, but only for very specific scenarios - for enterprise use you'd just get 10Gb or 100Gb fiber ethernet and skip all the problems associated with one device having multiple IP addresses.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

what im saying is that theoritically it will and if there is a problem, there is always a solution.

its too complicated that i dont even want to bother. A normal internet user like me would not even care about.