Dual lan question?

[ingeborgdot]

I have not purchased a motherboard with dual lan before but was wondering how it actually works. Can I assign one lan to go to the internet and the other one to go to our local network? I have that now with some of my computers but we actually just ordered an add on nic and did it that way. The board I'm talking about is the GIGABYTE GA-AX370-GAMING 5. Thanks.

 

[androbourne]

Depends on your NIC features and what you want to achive.

By default, each port on the NIC will have its own LAN address. So they will both be able to access the internet. Since I'm assuming you have a router. You wont be using one for just WAN and one for LAN. They will both be on the LAN, communicating to the router for WAN address.

Now there is a few things you can do with a duel since. Such as setting up an seconary network on your router and one of the duel NICs so you can access the secondary network OR team the NICs together to increase throughput (such as 2x 1GB NICs would make a 1x 2GB connection. However, your router and networking equipment needs to be able to handle more then 1GB of throughput) OR you can team the NICS together for a failover connection (such as, NIC#1 goes down, NIC#2 takes over the connection).

However again, it really depends on what you are looking to do. Do you game with this PC?

I would leave NIC#2 unplugged and simply save it as a spare connection instead something happens with NIC#1 such as lighting strike frying the Port. Then you have a spare you can use.

The features I mentioned above are normally used for server connections. It's not going to speed up your gaming at all by doing the above since I highly double your networking equipment or router even handles 1GB plus speeds.

 

[ingeborgdot]

One of my ports is connected to an Ethernet cable that comes in from our network which has internet. The other port is connected to an HP switch that is just connected in our room to our in-room server and goes nowhere else and has no internet. Does that make sense? My big question is do I need to buy another nic card like I have in the past to make this work or will the 2nd built in lan work like the add on we have used in the past?

 

[androbourne]

Yes. But what are you doing being connected to this HP Switch that is connected to nothing? Using it for a secondary network?

All this means is that the port connected to the wall, which is connected to the router, will provide you a local LAN address and access to the WAN.

The secondary connection to the HP switch is currently... doing nothing. It's most likely using PPIPA addressing and not even communicating with the switch if there is no DHCP source or if the LAN isnt set to static.

So what is your plan with this HP switch?