Why has our new server got two network ports

[speckytecky]

It's probably hugely obvious to almost everyone else but why has our new server got two network ports. Apologies in advance to all those who see this as a stupid question

[Domino]

for port teaming or load balancing.

Port teamings worth looking at, if you have switches which can support it

[Lee_K_81]

if you think of a server as a room and each network port as a door then imagine that 100s or 1000s of people want to get in and out. More doors = faster people can get in and out.

Can also be used for port teaming as domino suggested (although i'm not sure it has to be supported by switches depending on manufacturer of the nic), or if you use MS network load balancing you can have several servers listening on one IP which is assigned to one port on each server, they then use the other nic to communicate with each other and the network.

[mullet_man]

Our two admin servers both have two network ports teamed, am assuming it helps esp in the mornings when SIMs gets 40-50 logon requests.

[RabbieBurns]

Not much use if its a windows server, but I found this article an interesting read

Linux.com :: What can you do with a second Ethernet port?

[Andie]

It's probably hugely obvious to almost everyone else but why has our new server got two network ports. Apologies in advance to all those who see this as a stupid question

I didn't know, and now I have learnt something. Thanks for asking!

[joe90bass]

There's no such thing as a stupid quesiton, only a stupid answer

I have our two file server NICs teamed, I assumed that that gives us doubel the bandwidth, but I've never looked into it!

Again, thanks for asking the question, I'm sure plenty others have learnt something to!

[srochford]

Not much use if its a windows server, but I found this article an interesting read

Why? As others have said, you can use it for teaming, clustering, load balancing.

You can use it when you just want the machine to be on 2 networks - eg a proxy server or other firewall type device.

Ultimately, I suspect most server motherboards (and many desktop boards) come with 2 network connections because it's very cheap to do it and it can be useful to have it.

[RabbieBurns]

Why what?

Why did I find it an intersting read?

or why is an article about linux configurations not much use for windows servers?

[Domino]

i think there's confusion there, sroachford obviously thought you meant

"two network ports aren't much good for windows servers"

when you meant
"this article is about linux.."

[dave.81]

I'll be setting up port teaming on all our servers during the summer. Seems a very useful idea to me

[SteveBentley]

Back in the good old days (!) it was common to use servers as routers. Our Netware servers had about 4 network cards - on 10-Base-2 with BNC connectors. One NIC handled the incoming network uplink, and the others had long chains of PCs hanging off them.

[Lee_K_81]

i think there's confusion there, sroachford obviously thought you meant

"two network ports aren't much good for windows servers"

when you meant
"this article is about linux.."

I thought the same. It did sound like you were saying that dual ports weren't much use in windows RabbieBurns, rather than that the article isnt much use for his current situation. lol

[speckytecky]

Thanks folks for all the prompt and informative answers.

This is one heck of a great learning resource!

[mattx]

Back in the good old days (!) it was common to use servers as routers.:

Lordy, brings back memories of building servers with two token ring cards in - and sometimes different servers for different protocol types !! One for IP and another for NetBUI - those were the days.....