2 ethernet cards, 2 ports, can i use both in one comp?

[leelai]

hey,
i have 2 ethernet cards, 2 ports in my room, 2 separate IPs. how do i use them both in my laptop? can i?

lee

[leelai]

haha, yup. i'm in a dorm. there are 2 ethernet jacks in the wall. i have 2 pcmcia ethernet cards. i would like to use both if it would increase my bandwidth...but if there's no point...

[Jeffbx]

You can use them both, but it's not going to increase your bandwidth. You can have two network connections running, but you can only use one of them at a time to communicate.

[JoeSmooth]

There is a point to it, but it's tricky. What you want to do is called load balancing. There are a couple of qualifiers. First the NICs both have to be identical. Second they have to support load balancing (mostly found in server NICs. I have never heard of any pcmcia nics that do but who knows...) Third, the only effect load balancing will have for you is to load balance the SENDS. Your receives (ie, download) will always come to one nic or the other. Since, most likely, you are looking to get off the campus network, you will be effectively communicating with one router. that means only one nic will be used for receives, though you can certainly overload that poor little router by doubling your sends. One other note, this can only be done under NT server, 2000 server, Unix/Linux or Netware

Enjoy

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