Dual Nics and Network Bridging Questions

Let me start out by saying I am total neebee to any advanced networking. I know basic stuff pretty well. I set up wireless and wired networks for all my friends and I do some networking at work. Just basic cmd / ipconfig, and setting up shares on drives and such. I just need some help with the advanced stuff.

First off is there anything to be gained having twin nics in a server trype computer.

The machine is a home / web file server. I put a pair of 10/100 nics into the machine then plugged them both into my 10/100 router.

Both cards are Enabled, Bridged and I have a 3rd Icon called Network Bridge
Enabled
MAC Bridge Miniport.

The 3rd icon seems to be tracking all the important info, IP and Subnet and all that stuff.

I put an icon in the sys tray to moniter the cards and they both show 10/100 working fine.

Can someone fill me in on what I should set, change or tweak to get any benift from it. I like the idea of 2 nics in the machine, just for the sake of having them. I dont know why, but there must be a good reason for it. I am just playing around with it. I was amazed at the ease of setup that XP required to get it all up and running. All I had to do was install them and reboot the machine with both cables plugged in.

If you are bridging, you don't want to plug both nics into the switch.

Bridging basically turns the computer itself into a 2-port switch.

Since you are on a home server, you are not getting any benefit from dual NICs. On work servers, they have 'load balancing' programs to get double speed from dual NICs. Without the software only one NIC is doing any work.

Bridging is to join two types of networks together. (E.G. eithernet and token ring) Your machine would talk to each type of network and pass packets from one network to the other. If both NICs are on eithernet, there is no 'bridge' work being done.

If both NICs are on eithernet, there is no 'bridge' work being done.

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Sure there is, you're still joining two separate physical segments. I've got a box right here thats been doing it for years.

XWRed1 said:

Sure there is, you're still joining two separate physical segments. I've got a box right here thats been doing it for years.

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He only has one segment.

Well yeah, he has them both plugged into the same segment. I told him it acts like a switch, that would be a hint to use it like one.

You were saying that its not bridging simply by virtue of both nics being ethernet nics. Didn't say anything about them both being the same segment.

Ok so it is really a wast of time to have them both plugged in. Oh well I thought that I was doing something that would gain me something. I really wanted to see if I could pull 2 IP's to the same machine. I guess not.

For your setup, you are not getting anything out of the dual NICs.