Re: Question about multiple LAN ports

Steve a écrit :
>
> Thanks, doesn't make much sense since routers are so cheap these days
> though. I thought perhaps you could use the 2nd port to double the speed of
> a connection to a server or WAN device with dual ports on it.
>

It is possible to make a team with several Intel PRO/100 or PRO/1000.

This team can be used for:
- Fail-over (if one lan fail, the data will use the other card)
- Port agregation (use 2 x 100 Mbps as 1 x 200 Mbps) (you must have
a good switch and often the same configuration at the other end)

3COM and Broadcom cards also have this kind of feature.

There is also a lot of benefit to separate the two Lan, for a better
security, or separating administration and users, or split 50% of the
workstations on one network and the 50% other on the second lan ...

in a Windows MSCS Cluster, the second lan will be used as heart-beat.

By the way, do you really need 8 USB ports on a mobo ??? ;-)

five years ago, the onboard lan was really unusual...

HTH,
Benoît.
.