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Combining NICs for speed

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9 replies

by stevoooooo

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I am trying to get two or more NICs in my Win2k server to combine under one IP address and share the I/O on my server. I have seen it done, but can't for the life of me figure out how to do it. I remember that both NICs got unique addresses originally and then they were combined to answer calls and coordinate as one NIC. Sped the network up considerably on the Exchange Server.
Any help?

9 replies

by nschulz

You need to turn the link into a trunk. You need a router and NIC software that supports trunking.

Thanks Norm

by stevoooooo

Thanks for the input. I am not aware of how to create/use trunks and was sure that this could be done with NICs only. Thanks anyway.

by bluhippo

All of my severs have two dual port NICs in them each. Each port is on a different subnet example 130.129.106.*, 130.129.107.* and 130.129.104 and so on. Each 100BaseT cable goes to it's own switch and then all of the switches are trunked together. This allows the switch to select the shortest and fastest route to the server for each request. Also under Advanced setting for each address I added the other gateways. When I ping any of the servers you will get an anwser back from which ever address is not busy. You can see this when you replidly ping a server. One time you will get the 106, then maybe the 107 the next time. This will speed up the flow and help with load sharing. Good Luck.

by stevoooooo

This sounds like a great idea for a later installation. Thanks for the input. I am not proficient enough with networking yet to do trunking. Could you point me in a direction to learn?

by shanghai sam

You can do this fairly cheaply $60/NIC with 3com Server NIC's. They come with load balancing software. May need 2 Ip's however.

by stevoooooo

You helped me get on the right track. I am using Intel NICs and your note confirmed what I thought. Thanks.

by lynnsm

Try teaming, this will give you the option of fault tolerance or load balancing. Some NIC's do not support this. You will need Intel Proset or HP Proset.

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