join two network cards

[volleyman]

is there a way in Win NT to join to network cards together to act as one, effectively doubling the network throughput?


thanks,


volleyman

 

[BradSQLGuy]

Nope sorry. If you'd like a faster NIC card they have 1000Mps cards but realistically they can only go as fast as the cable/hug/switch will allow. Cat5e is the best cable to use for this type of card but it still does not support that kind of data transfer rate. The reason you can't use 2 cards as one is because when the computers communicate the data is broken down into packets and marked by the card. The network card knows which packets are lost and which are received. If the remote computer needs the computer to retransmit then the NIC card will. If you had two cards the NIC's wouldn't be able to tell who sent what packet or which card needs to retransmit. -Does that help ya?

 

[BradSQLGuy]

By the way...the max speed CAT5e can transmit is 100 mega bits per second. I've seen the rating up to 300 to 400 Mps but only on paper. I've never personally used Gigabit NIC cards but in theory they are supposed to help speed up your network. Cat5e is the only cable that will support Gigabit equipment also. -Does that help ya?

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

Depends on what you mean by doubling throughput?
You can do Adapter teaming.
Check these pages

http://www.compaq.com/products/servers/networking/teaming.html

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/techno/media/lan/ether/channel/tech/fetec_wp.htm

If you look at the Cisco shite paper it shows a band width from 200 to 800 Mbs. But this requires up to 8 NIC of the same make and model and a Cisco switch with Fast Etherchannel.

We do adapter teaming on our older boxes using Intel NICs.
And we also have 2 Gbs NICs in out db server teamed. But we use this for fail-over more that band-width.

 

[gensan]

I have implemented adapter teaming and load balancing on one of our servers. The following conditions should exists:
1) identical NICs
2) switch that allows teaming/load balancing
3) NIC driver with such feature

You can use teaming to more than 2 NICs (I think it's up to 8?). they will eventually use 1 IP Add. And so far, works fine.

Youmay want to try it.

 

[Daveyboy2]

3Com makes some parralel tasking server NIC cards. They run quite nicely, and you can join a few of them at one time. I think they are the 3C980's - I've done a few parallel tasking jobs for redundancy a few years back, I know they are still available.

The 3Com stuff comes with the software to setup the parallel tasking also.

this way you get a redundant connection and more speed.

 

[Bealy]

Gensan's right. I have done it too. Works well, and gives you just one IP address.

 

[Mturner]

or use 2 100mbps network cards and connect them both up to the swich 100mbps in 100mbps out instead of 100mbps shared for in and out

 

[ChrisHirst]

Mturner's suggestion sounds good in theory but as most switches work at full duplex would not yield a speed advantage but instead would cause WINS resolution problems as there would be 2 IP,s with a single HOSTNAME. Why not use a multiport server card (ie a Dlink DFE-580TX 4 ports) this will give both Teaming for failover and Load balancing in a single PCI slot.


Chris.