Why 2 Ethernet Ports?

[brbubba]

Oh my god! I know what I'll be doing when mine arrives Ty!

I thought your switch had to support link aggregation too in order to make it work.

follow up question, how fast is gigabit ethernet for a home network? Firewire is 400Mbps, which gets somewhere around 50MBps so that means gigabit which is 1000Mbps can get 125MBps, is this correct?

Tyler

Thats extremely ideal circumstances. At work it will transfer a 40MB file in a second or two. Multiple small files will seriously reduce performance. Our switch isn't configured for jumbo frames and my PC is limited by the PCI bus in total transfer speed, which are two areas that could speed up performance. I can tell you though that it is A LOT faster than 100baseT, and if you need the speed bump don't hesitate to upgrade.

 

[daveL]

A second option is for "Link Aggregate". Make both work together for really fast networking! (see pic)

You'd have to have a switch that supports link aggregation to make use of this feature.

Edit: Whoops, didn't see the post ^^^.

 

[RedTomato]

Lots of data in and then lots of data back out in REAL TIME.

http://www.apple.com/uk/pro/profiles/tourdefrance/

Lovely link, but oh Apple, Apple, why is the text in light grey text on a white background? My eyes, my eyes were bleeding after reading that!

Ironically, it was a story about good design, ease of use and access....

 

[portent]

Did you read the part about them being in mid-range PC's too? Or did you just selectively read that **** that would reinforce your idiotic argument?

Yeah, I read it, but my definition of "midrange" is apparently different from yours. I've actually never seen a PC with two NICs standard, but then I've never been lucky enough to work for someone who'll spend more than $2500 on a PC. I'd love to see a link to one, though.

Even if you have dual NICs in your box, I don't see the point of using it as a router. A real router will give you at least 4 extra ports, use less energy, and won't bring down the network when you have to restart.

 

[RacerX]

I'm not trying to be snide, really. But it's not there for 'regular dude's.

I have to agree with this.

When you look at systems like the first Blue & White G3 Servers, one of the hardware components that they came with was a 4 port ethernet card... even though those systems already had an ethernet port. The idea was that you could have the server have 5 IP and MAC addresses, not something that they average home or even high end users would need or want.

 

[mterlouw]

Even if you have dual NICs in your box, I don't see the point of using it as a router. A real router will give you at least 4 extra ports, use less energy, and won't bring down the network when you have to restart.

Most people who run a dual-NIC machine as a router run the local network jack into a switch, where they can vary the switch size to get the number of ports they need.

 

[brbubba]

Most people who run a dual-NIC machine as a router run the local network jack into a switch, where they can vary the switch size to get the number of ports they need.

I agree, I do it myself. I have a small form factor 900 mhz Dell running IPCop and it never goes down. It has three ethernet ports, one onboard port and a dual port PCI NIC, but I only use two. Cable modem comes into one and the other goes out to my Wireless router, the LAN side, which automatically bridges the wireless to the dell firewall/router. The real advantage of this system is power and features that would trounce most sub $1000 Firewall/Routers.

 

[portent]

I agree, I do it myself. I have a small form factor 900 mhz Dell running IPCop and it never goes down. It has three ethernet ports, one onboard port and a dual port PCI NIC, but I only use two. Cable modem comes into one and the other goes out to my Wireless router, the LAN side, which automatically bridges the wireless to the dell firewall/router. The real advantage of this system is power and features that would trounce most sub $1000 Firewall/Routers.

Using an older PC as a dedicated router box I can understand. What I have trouble with is the notion of using your brand-new workstation in that capacity. I mean, if you pay $2500 or more for a quad-core machine, wouldn't you want every cycle of CPU capacity dedicated to whatever you're doing?

As for the power of consumer-level routers...Linksys still sells one that runs Linux for $70 or so. Pick any of the fine, free firmware "upgrades" available, and you get an immensely powerful router for the cost of an ordinary WAP.

 

[daveL]

Using an older PC as a dedicated router box I can understand.

Terrible waste of electricity compared to a Linksys or such.

What I have trouble with is the notion of using your brand-new workstation in that capacity. I mean, if you pay $2500 or more for a quad-core machine, wouldn't you want every cycle of CPU capacity dedicated to whatever you're doing?

And when you are using every CPU cycle doing real work, what do you think your network latency is going through your "router"? Piss poor.

As for the power of consumer-level routers...Linksys still sells one that runs Linux for $70 or so. Pick any of the fine, free firmware "upgrades" available, and you get an immensely powerful router for the cost of an ordinary WAP.

I couldn't agree with you more. I use DD-WRT firmware in my Linksys; works great. Horses for courses, as they say.

 

[brbubba]

Using an older PC as a dedicated router box I can understand. What I have trouble with is the notion of using your brand-new workstation in that capacity. I mean, if you pay $2500 or more for a quad-core machine, wouldn't you want every cycle of CPU capacity dedicated to whatever you're doing?

As for the power of consumer-level routers...Linksys still sells one that runs Linux for $70 or so. Pick any of the fine, free firmware "upgrades" available, and you get an immensely powerful router for the cost of an ordinary WAP.

I guess it depends on what you are using the computer to do. I agree though, you are more likely to see it in a small business using a mac pro and OS X Server, where you would be hard pressed to saturate all four cores doing duty as a server. However, even in the Anandtech review of the Mac Pro there were few apps that could fully take advantage of the 4 cores, which obviously may change in the future.

DD-WRT is great, but even with the fancy firmware those boxes still have their limits and running any kind of bittorrent client with more than one active job will quickly demonstrate what I am talking about.