Dual ethernet cards

[I_A]

May sound like an insane question, so I will bow to the superior wisdom of anyone who answers (I've got no idea), but is it possible to boost download speeds / achieve greater access to the net if I use two ethernet cards in the back of my desktop unit, running separate RJ45s to the hub? The computers in our house connect to the internet via a network hub box, so the bandwidth we get is split...

Thanks,
I_A

[glc]

Nope.

[Confused]

No. Download speed is determined by speed of your connection.
Chas

[flsurf420]

what about two dsl modems?

[scott_d]

The cost of the 2 dsl lines and hardware needed to run a dual dsl connection would way outweigh any benifits you would get.
Cisco i think makes it for businesses and stuff, and its not something you would likely use for your house.

[azscary]

You cannot run two DSL modems on the same phone line.

Two DSL modems would require DSL service on two seperate phone lines and to do that you would be paying whatever your monthly rate is twice and be into two 1 or 2 year contracts instead of one.

As Scott_D said the cost versus the benefit would be prohibitive.

[Nunol]

Dual Ethernet cards (windows server 2003 & R2) will work for the use with the feature"Network Load Balancing" You can use the server as a desktop with no problem at whats so ever. Network Load Balancing Manager allows you to create new Network Load Balancing clusters and configure and manage clusters and all of the cluster's hosts from a single remote or local computer. Ideally you should use a second network adapter when managing the cluster from a local computer. Network Load Balancing can be bound to multiple network adapters allowing you to configure multiple independent clusters on each host. Support for multiple network adapters is different from virtual clusters in that virtual clusters allow you to configure multiple clusters on a single network adapter. Using this feature has lots of key features but the on most useful in the discussing is performance. This is how it works.

During packet reception, the Network Load Balancing fully pipe-lined implementation overlaps the delivery of incoming packets to TCP/IP and the reception of other packets by the NDIS driver. This increases the overall processing speed and reduces latency because TCP/IP can process a packet while the NDIS driver receives a subsequent packet. It also reduces the overhead required for TCP/IP and the NDIS driver to coordinate their actions, and in many cases it eliminates an extra memory copy of packet data. During packet sending, Network Load Balancing also enhances throughput and reduces latency and overhead by increasing the number of packets that TCP/IP can send with one NDIS call. To achieve these performance enhancements, Network Load Balancing allocates and manages a pool of packet buffers and descriptors, that it uses to overlap the actions of TCP/IP and the NDIS driver.

Network Load Balancing can operate in two modes: unicast and multicast. Unicast support is enabled by default.

Using a router
If Network Load Balancing clients are accessing a cluster through a router when the cluster has been configured to operate in multicast mode, be sure that the router meets the following requirements:

Accepts an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) reply that has one media access control (MAC) address in the payload of the ARP structure, but appears to arrive from a station with another MAC address, as determined by the Ethernet header
Accepts an ARP reply for a unicast IP address with a multicast MAC address in the payload of its ARP structure
These conditions allow the router to map the cluster IP addresses to the corresponding MAC address. If your router does not meet these requirements, you can also create a static ARP entry in the router. Cisco routers require a static ARP entry because they do not support the resolution of unicast IP addresses to multicast MAC addresses.

I hope this helps you all with the topic.

[glc]

1. That's not something that would benefit a home user on residential broadband one iota. Load balancing using multiple adapters is a commercial business thing, and is very beneficial there.

2. This thread is 4 YEARS old.