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

[Phusius]

If I hook two lines up from my router to both ports does that mean my internet and download speeds will be faster?

 

[_JP_]

No.
It means that if your motherboard (and your router) supports double-teaming for those ports, bandwidth will be almost doubled.
If not, it just means you have two ethernet ports on your motherboard which you can plug both to the router and have them that way.
At best you can specify what goes trough which port.

 

[Phusius]

How do I know if it supports double teaming. Can you help me?

My mother is the Asus Z68 Deluxe NON-gen3 version, and my router is the Belkin N600 DB, and I pay for a 24mbs fiber optic internet each month.

 

[mlee49]

Surely your motherboard came with an owners manual, have you referenced there?

The manufacture may have details to benefits as to why they placed multiple ports on your board.

 

[lindy]

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

Networking...

If I hook two lines up from my router to both ports does that mean my internet and download speeds will be faster?

Nope...

And, yes I can be a real smart ***

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Dual LAN MBs are more often used for dual network connectivity and/or daisy chaining network connections, as per in an office or home office environment.

Your bandwidth is going to be limited by the ISP speed you have. Having a dual LAN MB can't really change that.

If none of the above applies to you, the only actual use you may get out of the 2nd LAN port is redundancy, meaning having a backup in case the first fails for some reason.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I learned this recently, but teaming does not exactly double bandwidth. You can transfer data at only 1 Gb/s to each IP address, but if you transfer to more than one IP address simultaneously, then the aggregate bandwidth can exceed 1Gb/s. This means it's great for servers that serve many clients simultaneously but is less useful for home users who usually only transfer to one client at a time.

Before you even do this, you need a router or switch that supports teaming. And it won't speed up your internet connectivity unless you have a fiber line to your residence that supports over 1000Mbps (most likely not).

 

[_JP_]

Eh, I was in doubt that it was something like that...wasn't too far off. And I should have said the doubled bandwidth was theoretical.
Still, his download speeds are still limited first by his ISP (in this case, 24Mbps) and second by the server from where he is downloading, be it either by rule or distance.
The fact that the motherboard has two ethernet ports won't improve that.

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Back in the day we used to put 2 Ethernet cards in one rig. We would hook the cable modem up to one and the other to a network switch. Fast easy router. Guess you can do the same and instead of hooking the modem to one nic you can hook it to the router and the other to a switch and share the net connection to allow access to more rigs.

 

[AlienIsGOD]

i knew having 2 ports on my old Gigabyte EP45 DS4P were pretty much useless for the regular user.

 

[phanbuey]

so that you can have two Ethernets. duh.

That's like asking why have two women in bed... don't ask - just stick your cable in there and envy your router for all of the action it's getting.

 

[Mussels]

to keep it simple, your two network ports are for the use of connecting to two networks at the same time.


there is no purpose to them for 99.9% of home users.

 

[Elmo]

You can set one for upstream and the other for down stream or both to way. You can double your Lan throughput but you wont double your wan throughput

 

[phanbuey]

or you can double your mint.

 

[brandonwh64]

mussels has the main use for it. At work we use these to connect a PC to its own private network then the other would be for a VPN connection to allow third party venders to remote control and fix the machine in times of need.

 

[v12dock]

You will love it someday when one of them dies

 

[The Von Matrices]

You can set one for upstream and the other for down stream or both to way. You can double your Lan throughput but you wont double your wan throughput

The ports are already full duplex, so one of them can simultaneously transmit 1000Mbps up and 1000Mbps down; you don't need two to do that.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

You will love it someday when one of them dies

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.

 

[Deleted member 3]

How do I know if it supports double teaming. Can you help me?

My mother is the Asus Z68 Deluxe NON-gen3 version, and my router is the Belkin N600 DB, and I pay for a 24mbs fiber optic internet each month.

Not relevant, your router is very unlikely to support it, and even if it does there is no reason to connect to your router faster.

 

[Jetster]

Is it just me or is it obvious its for two networks. Two cat5 cables to a router is just not logical. You would have to have SSDs to use that speed at both ends. Besides routers are only 1000Mbs the same a one cat5, right?

 

[TIGR]

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.

True, however I was just saved by having two ethernet ports when one on my one of my servers failed. This is not statistically significant but it's true that if it does, you'll be glad to have two.

 

[Aquinus]

At work I use two NICs. One is on the internal network which is where some of our servers are, the other goes right to the internet using a static ip for testing. That external IP is setup so I can test and develop SAML 2.0 SSO with Google without impacting anyone else (netmasking on just that ip) and so I can tell if a slowdown is actually our network and not the ISP. The internal IP gives me access to everything without having to use tunnels or use web traffic when I could be working locally.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Is it just me or is it obvious its for two networks.

Already been said in so many words, but that's just one of the normal uses. Daisy chaining would be another common one.

 

[baggpipes]

Easy manual loopback test? :troll:

 

[Delta6326]

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