Two NIC's in one computer HELP !!!!!

[JMicaelK73]

Hi guys, trying to set up a network. Have a Netgear Router to which I have 4 computer hooked up to Cable with. Bought 2 Gigabit cards, that I want to put in to 2 of my computers for fast file transfer between them. How can I do this, I'm running XP and both computers have built in NIC's for the internet.

Please help.

Micael

 

[AFB]

Simple answer : You can't. The best thing would be to get a gigabit switch and cards.

 

[JMicaelK73]

So a crossover cable and Gigabit cards won't work, Why ???

Micael

 

[calbars]

yes, you can make it work. you'll just will have to do some work to learn how to manipulate the routing tables of your 2 xp machines

you'll have to manualy insert a prefered route to the other computer via the gigabit adapter

if you know ip routing, just open a shell and type "route help". if not, then google is your friend!

 

[JackMDS]

JMicaelK73

I do not want to rain on you New Giga Parade.

Before you S***w Up your setting.

The Giga transfer will be about 25% to 50% more.

I.e. if you current Hardware yields 10Mb/sec. it will go Up to 13Mb/sec or 15Mb/sec. may be a little more if you are Lucky.

So you would ask yourself Why the Heck I bought Giga?

Giga means that the Internal Clock is running 1000MHz. Trying to attribute it to "Speed of Transfer" is a Marketing thing.

Current Giga NICs are highly dependent on the OS and System used. Nowhere in the real world it is close to 1000% (x10) improvement.MS's TCP/IP protocol on WinXP is not yet optimized for such high speed communication.

Under "normal situation" between two home computers on a peer to peer Network. The gain of "Speed" might be only 25% to 50% (x .25 to .50).

I.e. if your system is 100Mb/sec. and yields 10MB/sec. transfer, by replacing the NIC with Giga NICs and the Switch with Giga Switch the Network will probably yield 12.5MB/sec. to 15MB/sec. (if your hardware is fast).

If one of the computers is equipped with Real Server OS like Windows 2003 the "Speed" from Server to client might improve by 150% i.e. you will get 25MB/sec. (x2.5)

If you install Giga on Double Xenon Computers with fast SCSI RAID, and Server Software you might get 400% (x4) improvement.

All numbers are approximation for demonstration purposes, YMMV.

Link to: The Big Giga Thread

:light:

 

[calbars]

Two words: "jumbo frames"

If you can manipulate the MTU of the adapters in windows XP (1), specially since they are in cross-over mode (i.e. no fancy switch that supports jumbo frame needed) , then you will see a lot more troughput from your direct link, especially when transferring BIG files.


But besides that, yes, Gigabit Ethernet performance is to be taken with a grain of salt...

(1) I'm sure adapters from serious manufacturers (ie, intel, 3com, etc) will let you do that. but then i'm more of linux head, so YMMV

 

[JMicaelK73]

Well I never hope for any 1000 MBps transfer, just for more than I have. So I need to manipulate the routing tables, to get it to work. Does anyone have a link on how to do this, or does any one have an other way of doing this.

Thanks Micael

 

[calbars]

well, i'm no windows networking guru... but here's one possible way to do it without playing with your routing table. comments from those with a clue are welcome...

supposing your existing home network is using 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0 address range and that your 2 workstations have the netbios name "pinky" and "brain", then...

1) install your new adapters. configure both your new adapters to use the, say, 10.0.1.0/255.255.255.0 address range, using 10.0.1.1 and 10.0.1.2 respectively with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 in the advanced ip properties and making sure to leave default gateway field empty (very important).

2) plug in the cable (any standard cat5e cable will do with gigaE, IIRC. i.e. you do not need a "crossover" cable, the adapters are supposed to sort out if you're using straight-through or cross-over cable using MDI-X, http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MDIX.html)

3) ping the other station using its 10.0.1.x address. if it works, you're in business

4) once you get it working, go to the windows\system32\drivers\etc directory on each xp workstation and edit the "hosts" file to add
the following lines

10.0.1.1 pinky
10.0.1.2 brain

If you are using an internal domain, say "home.net", then your lines should look like:
10.0.1.1 pinky.home.net pinky

If you are using Active Directory on your home network, then it's another ballgame.

5) reboot your machines, open a command shell and type on the first machine "ping brain". if you see:
Pinging brain [10.0.1.2] with 32 bytes of data

then your giga link is working.

If it is
Pinging brain [192.168.1.x] with 32 bytes of data
then you may have to look on how the netbios over ip resolver works with windows (lmhosts, hosts, dns, wins, browsing, etc)

HTH

 

[Freeze]

I thought that the GigE standard required autosensing TX/RX connections? The 3COM cards I have here let you plug a standard CAT6 cable from 1 computer to another without having a switch or crossover cable involved.

 

[Fiveohhh]

nm

 

[JMicaelK73]

Thanks calbars I'll try it, and NO I'm not using active directory.

Micael

 

[JMicaelK73]

Thanks it worked, well at least as far as using PING, will try to transfer a big file now and see if that works and if I get any performance increase.

Micael

 

[JMicaelK73]

Sorry for that, don't know how that happened.
Micael

 

[JMicaelK73]

Well i tried it using a crossover cable, and to me it looks slower than my regular 100 MBs cable, but at least I can use the internet at the same time. Is there anything that I need to tweek to get it to work faster.

Thanks Micael

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: JMicaelK73
Well i tried it using a crossover cable, and to me it looks slower than my regular 100 MBs cable, but at least I can use the internet at the same time. Is there anything that I need to tweek to get it to work faster.

Thanks Micael

use a straight thru cable for the card-2-card connection. Should work fine.

use different ip networks on the gig cards (10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 with a mask of 255.255.255.0)

You're all set. Just don't put a default gateway on the gig network cards. You're proabably getting poor response from the crossover cable. Try stright-thru.

 

[JMicaelK73]

OK I'll try a regular cable then.

Micael

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: JMicaelK73
OK I'll try a regular cable then.

Micael

gig ethernet uses all 4 pairs of a cat5 cable. a crossover cable only "crosses" pairs 2 and 3 leaving 1 and 4 straight-thru. I can see that causing the NICs some trouble.

 

[JMicaelK73]

Well I tried with a regular cat5, no speed increas at all, don't know what to do. Don't wanna go and buy some very pricy Gigabit cards if they don't work that well.

Micael

 

[JackMDS]

Well at this point you have two options.

1. Forget about it.

2. Take two computers off the Network take out the regular NICs, put in the Gigas and configure it work in the old fashion way.

Test it. You would know if the Cards work at all and if the ??Speeeeeddddd? is worth while.



:sun:

 

[JMicaelK73]

Well the two other cards are built in would be hard to get them out of there
So is there anything else I can do with the cards, any tweeks to do ???

Thanks Micael

 

[JackMDS]

If they are Mobo LAN, you do not need to get them Out Disable them in the BIOS.

 

[JMicaelK73]

Do I have to do it in the BIOS or can I do it in Windows, tried Windows gave me no change in speed, went back to the built in cards and got half the transfer time. Took a 4 GB file, which took 16 min with Gigabit, took 8 min with the built in NIC's. This doesn't sound right to me.

Thanks Micael

 

[JMicaelK73]

Anyone have any thought about this, should I just send back the cards or what.

Micael

 

[Garion]

Two thoughts:

Edit your LMHOSTS file to hard-set the IP address of the other machine - I think it's c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts - There's a .sam file that needs to be renamed to flat lmhosts. That should force netbios name resolution to go gig. While you're at it, do the same thing for c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts too. It might have two IP's now and be load balancing between them. You might also have to make sure LMHOSTS is enabled - Advanced tab of TCP/IP properties.

One thing - Remember NOT to set a default gateway on the gig NIC. That would confuse things tremendously.

Last thought.. Try and UNPLUG the 100BaseT connections from the two PC's and just leave the gig ports hooked up. Reboot and THEN try your file transfer. If it's slower, then something else is wrong, hardware-wise.

- G

 

[JMicaelK73]

Have two ip's in the hosts file as someone told me to have, one for each of the Gigabit cards 10.0.1.1 and 10.0.1.2. So I should rename the lmhosts.sam file to lmhosts without .sam.

Thanks Micael