[realtadiquantu]

So I have two onboard NIC's on my Asus P5k Premium.

NIC one goes into a Linksys WRT54GS v7 w/ DD_WRT Micro to Cable modem
NIC two goes into Cable modem 2

When I only have one of the connections active (either disabled the second in Windows or left it unplugged), all of my internet traffic is fine.

When I have both connections enabled, Trillian will hop from connection to connection, Firefox will once in a while shift from the windows default internet connection of NIC1 to NIC2, and then back, and my traffic on NIC2 will slow to 0 and then pick back up again even though it's bound the NIC2.

Does Windows have some type of bandwidth management where it tries to see which route over the internet is the most efficient?

Why does my traffic bound to NIC2 slow to a crawl and resume momentarily?

Is there a way to bind Firefox or Thunderbird to a local IP?

~Thanks

[skidooosl]

check your routing table when this happens

netstat -rn at a command prompt

see what the metric is for the two routes... if its the same it may try to load balance...

also remove the default gateway from whatever connection you do not want used... then you can specify routes for a piticular destination that will route over the other interface.

[realtadiquantu]

Originally Posted by skidooosl

check your routing table when this happens

netstat -rn at a command prompt

see what the metric is for the two routes... if its the same it may try to load balance...

also remove the default gateway from whatever connection you do not want used... then you can specify routes for a piticular destination that will route over the other interface.

I'll try this tonight.

When you say remove the default gateway, that's my NIC1 w/ Router, which I have statically assigned. So if I delete the gateway entry of 192.168.1.1, am I done or how do I specify the particular destination?

[dark_15]

As far as I know, Windows does not support any dynamic routing protocols that you would need to determine which connection is the fastest route. If you have default gateways set on both NIC's, traffic will inconsistently egress one interface over the other. This is especially true if they both have the same preference (or cost/metric) for your default route. Hope that helps!

[realtadiquantu]

Originally Posted by dark_15

As far as I know, Windows does not support any dynamic routing protocols that you would need to determine which connection is the fastest route. If you have default gateways set on both NIC's, traffic will inconsistently egress one interface over the other. This is especially true if they both have the same preference (or cost/metric) for your default route. Hope that helps!

That's what I was thinking.. How do I prevent this from happening?

[skidooosl]

a default route is used for any traffic that does not have an explicit route defined....

say you have 2 interfaces... you give one a default route so all traffic will use that interface... if you want traffic to route out the other interface you need a route statement listing the secondary connection as the gateway....

basically you need to add a route for the destination network pointing out the other connection

when you do a netstat -rn it will display your routing table... the line that lists a dest and mask of 0.0.0.0 is your default route

for example lets say you want all traffic to flow via the interface with the address 192.168.1.2 but traffic with a destination of 2.2.2.2 should flow out of the interface with the ip address 192.168.2.3

you would need to specify a route for 2.2.2.2 address that points to the 192.168.2.3 interface

the syntax to add this route to the routing table would be

route -p add 2.2.2.2 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.2.3

if you type route at a command prompt it will display all the syntax for the command if that helps...

I did a quick google search and this link may explain it better than I can

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...routing-table/

[realtadiquantu]

Alright, thank you everyone for your input. I will be trying this when I get free time.

I really appreciate your help!