Possible? Two network cards for faster web speeds? (1 Viewer)

[NickSo]

I have two network cards currently in my computer, one onboard motherboard one (10/100mbit/sec), and one from my old computer (10mbit/sec).

My dorm has web access via ethernet to the rez network. Im not sure its set to have only one IP per room, but if its not, would it be possible to hook both NICs through a hub into the wall, and set it up to both be enabled to access the internet together?

Just curious

 

[JoshEE]

I don't think that this is possible, or at least i've never heard of it. I know that diamond (i think it was) released a "gaming" 112k modem a while ago, that was essentially two 56k modems on the same card. You'd have to have two telephone lines, and somehow they'd sync and give you faster speeds. Anyway enough rambling, sorry I couldn't be of more help.
-Josh

 

[Patrick Sun]

I think Diamond called it something like "Shotgun" technology to bond the 2 modem channels for faster throughput.

 

[Tekara]

okay, bottom line for you is an unsatisfying no.

for better information you should do searches for "load balancing." load balancing is where you would use multiple netowrk connections and balance the traffic across the nics either by requests or by bandwidth.

for the basics of why I don't think it will work.
windows doesn't support simultaneous use of multiple network cards. so there won't be any speed gains by installing them both. windows assumes that multiple nics are used for multiple networks, that is, an internal network and an external network.

next, windows has some real issues with identifying itself on a netowrk that it has two connections two. i.e. windows will attempt to register the same computer name twice on the same network.

now I do believe linux has some capabilities for load balancing nics, as I've seen a few people use linux boxes as load-balancing routers. although I don't think you'd see any great improvement in internet speeds if both of the nics are connected to the same network since a single nic by itself shouldn't be the bottleneck of the network.

well, hopefully that gives you some information to work with.

 

[JustinCleveland]

I had a gateway computer that had two nic's installed, and they conflicted with each other and the internet would be streaky. Bottom line, as was said before... no.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

In addition, the bottle neck of your internet speed is not your NIC, it's the DSL/Cable connection. A 100 based network has MORE than enough bandwith to fully exploit the fastest Cable connections-- so even if you could support dual cards, it wouldnt make a difference.

-Vince

 

[DonRoeber]

High end servers have tools that let you do this. I have a Sun server at work that has a four-port network card in it, and all ports are "bonded" together to make a very 400mbit or so network port. I haven't seen this feature in any modern desktop OS, although it might be in linux (haven't checked). Don't know enough about Windows Servers to know if they can do it either.

 

[Josh Lowe]

You'd have to be able to do something like Fast Etherchannel which lets you team two individual interfaces to act as a single "virtual" interface.

To pull this off you would need two NICs in your machine that can be teamed, and software to configure teaming.

You would also need a managed switch that would let you configure the ports your NICs are plugged into to work with Fast Etherchannel. And then you have to consider that this switch would be connected by a single 100 megabit interface to your school's network.. totally negating any benefit you might have gotten from your teamed NICs. The only way around that would be to have a gigabit fiber or copper connection from the switch to the school network. And if you had that, you wouldn't need to do all of that teaming stuff because you could just get a gigabit NIC for your PC..

So, in the end, the answer is no. :-P

 

[John_Berger]

The term for doing this is called "trunking". It requires multiple cards to be connected to the same Ethernet copper or fibre switch that allows trunking to take place.

What you are talking about might be possible but only if the backend and connection to the Internet is faster than the combined bandwidth of the trunked connection. I doubt sincerely that any college with an IT staff worth their salt would dare to allow unfettered, 20 Mb/sec (minimum) bandwidth to any dorm connection.

 

[Bill Slack]

Nick's in a dorm, and I would bet the internet connection ends up being capped per ip/user. So, it likely would improve his speed, in this case.

But, it's also the kind of thing will get you very well known to the network services dept. at your school. My roomate and I pushed their limits all the time and would get phone calls and emails about things we were doing. Never in trouble per se, just telling us to stop doing things.

 

[NickSo]

So basically it MIGHT increase my speed, but personal PC's on windows are not capable of doing this, only server systems could?

 

[John_Berger]

More or less. You would need to install software on the PC that allows the fragmented data segments to be combined, and I don't know of any for non-server operating systems; you will need a switch that supports trunking; and you will need a faster connection that what the trunking would allow, depending on how your campus network is set up.

I won't say it can't be done in your situation, but I would say that it's very, very unlikely.