Network Bridge between two Broadcom Netxtreme I adapters

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drsantafe

drsantafe

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I have a HP Z800 workstation with a Windows 7 professional OS. The Z800 has two Broadcom Netxtreme I adapters. I was wondering if there would be any advantage of bridging them for increasing throughput from my 10 mbps (at best) internet connection.

I had hoped to try teaming through Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 4 but this seems designed for various forms of Server OSs --- not Windows 7.

Currently I have the two broadcom adapters each connected to my DSL router with a separate ethernet cable.

As a second question...would bridging the two adapters cause any security problems?.. seems like they would be bridged going into the router and hence not, but I'm out of my depth here.

Thanks in Advance to you Network Wizards out there.
 
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Kewlx25

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DSL and 10gb do not belong in the same paragraph. Half-serious joke.

1) A 10gb Internet connection is going to cost you over $10,000/month, no matter where you live in the world.
2) A 10gb switch is going to cost you about $4,000 for something like 8 ports
3) Most routers can not handle 10gb unless you are paying $10,000-$20,000, or you built your own. Even if you built your own, the NICs alone would cost you over $1,200
4) There is no way DSL will handle even 1% of 10gb, unless you're on one of the experimental DSL techs that claim to handle 1gb if you're close enough

Bridging does not combine your NICs together. You need something like LAGG. Anyway, 10gb is over 1GB/s, that is 2x faster than nearly every SSD out there, except the crazy fast expensive PCIe ones.
 
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drsantafe

drsantafe

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My apologies, my mistake indicates my need for your expertise. I get at the most 10 mbps via my CenturyLink connection. Sorry for my confusion. But my questions stand...in essence is there some way of using my two Broadcom adapters to more effectively use my internet connection and if I do so as indicated, does it pose a security risk.

 
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bill001g

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Your first question to a point made sense if the DSL was not involved. It is possible with a special route/switch and special settings in the PC to bond 2 ports together to increase the speed. If you had a internet connection faster than 1g it would help.

Now you say you only have 10m. This makes the question about port combining almost as silly as combining dsl and 10g. A single 1g port on your machine is already 100 times faster than your internet. The internet will still only run 10m no matter how fast you connect to your router.

So you could setup port bonding on your pc its generically called 802.3ad but your router does not support it. If you bridge the ports you will likely get a massive broadcast loop. To a point I am surprised you can actually get both ports to come active in the PC plugged into the same router most the time the OS does not like 2 devices in the same subnet.
 
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drsantafe

drsantafe

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I asked:

" if there would be any advantage of bridging them for increasing throughput from my 10 mbps (at best) internet connection. "

Namely I have them, they are built into my workstation, is there any advantage to using them both? I got them should I use both of them?

I specifically asked about bridge connections:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-network-bridge#1TC=windows-7

Undoubtedly this is a bit like asking if I should use 4 wheel drive while driving on city streets and that WOULD have been silly back when there were no full time 4 wheel drives, but now there are and I have one. So far the answers I have received might be in this analogous situation (1) its stupid to have a all time 4 wheel drive in the city and (2) drop the front drive shaft and use 2 wheel drive


Nobody has mentioned this:

As a second question...would bridging the two adapters cause any security problems?..
 
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drsantafe

drsantafe

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Create a network bridge
Windows 7 More
A network bridge is software or hardware that connects two or more networks so that they can communicate. You can create only one network bridge on a computer, but one bridge can handle any number of network connections.

Open Network Connections by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type adapter, and then, under Network and Sharing Center, click View network connections.

Hold down the Ctrl key and select each network connection that you want to add to the bridge.

Right-click one of the selected network connections, and then click Bridge Connections. Administrator permission required If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Warning

You shouldn't create a bridge between an Internet connection and a network connection because it creates an unprotected link between your network and the Internet, which makes your network accessible to anyone on the Internet.
 
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bill001g

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Its not like you have to tell me how to create one.

What you have done is the same as if you took a cable and cabled the 2 ports on the router directly together. This normally causes a loop. The router may be smart enough to run spanning tree and block one of the 2 ports.

So you either have a loop or you have a port blocked. In either case you still can not combine 2 ports with a bridge.

This was told to you from the very first post but you don't want to hear it. You need to run port bonding to use both ports and your router does not support it.
 
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drsantafe

drsantafe

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Well I've decided to buy a second internet connection to speed up things, 10mbps may be the bottleneck. So now I'll have two modems and two Broadcom adapters. Currently I plan to connect the two together with software:

http://www.connectify.me/dispatch/

I've used Connectify before to do what I was told was impossible, link multiple computers to a single wifi connection coming from my Android phone.

Here I'll be using Dispatch (quoted from their web page):


The Power of Load Balancing

In a nutshell, a traditional network load balancer is a hardware router that can connect to multiple Internet connections at once, balancing your Internet traffic across all of them for a faster and more reliable experience. The trouble is, most load balancing routers (sometimes called multi-WAN routers) are made with networking pros in mind. But, with Connectify Dispatch you get a fully-featured load balancing router in an easy-to-use software-only package. Unlike hardware load balancers, Connectify Dispatch lets you combine as many WAN connections as your PC can handle. And here's the best part: you get all this and more for a fraction of the cost of regular hardware load balancers. What are you waiting for? Try Connectify Dispatch today...

Tomshardware seems to like Dispatch:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Connectify-hotspot-Dispatch-Kickstarter-Alex-Gizis,16738.html

I certainly like the folks at Connectify as they let me do what people say is impossible, silly or stupid depending on their attitudes.
 
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bill001g

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That is not what you even asked about you asked about hooking 2 interface on your computer to a single router.

You can be sooo happy and think you have solved your problem you just have a new one and since you think you know everything about load balancing now I won't even bother to give you a clue. Your magic software you don't understand will solve all your problems.

 
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drsantafe

drsantafe

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I'd just as soon not hear from bill001g any more. Hostility isn't what I want when I pose a sincere question. For other readers I note the following.

I started with this question;


I have a HP Z800 workstation with a Windows 7 professional OS. The Z800 has two Broadcom Netxtreme I adapters. I was wondering if there would be any advantage of bridging them for increasing throughput from my 10 mbps (at best) internet connection.

That was mostly provoked by the presence of an unused adapter...I wondered if it could be of any use. They appear to have a little memory and more can sometimes be better.

Digging around and looking at it made it clear that I could add a second residential 10 mbps router and connect it to my unused adapter. But...how to manage the traffic? I found the folks at Connectify make a product called Dispatch that I've now been happily using for over a month. It does indeed combine the two adapters speed and bandwidth and give me speedtests of 18 mbps.

It doesn't work perfectly for logins that are not secure. Dispatch handles secure logins well but with nonsecure ones, like forums or gaming, it can make logins not work. So I turn Dispatch off, login, and then turn it back on.

At any rate this is a solution of what to do with that extra adapter...it adds speed and bandwidth when there are no other services available. Where I live, 10 mbps (really around 8 or 9) is the best you can get and now I have 18 mbps.
 
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bill001g

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You come and post inaccurate stuff and then think it is hostile when someone corrects you. You then continue to post incorrect stuff of course I get frustrated because someone may find this post later and assume what you post is valid if it is not challenged.

So now what you posting a advertisement for connectify.

And again you post inaccurate information.

" It does indeed combine the two adapters speed and bandwidth and give me speedtests of 18 mbps."

From connectifies site directly it says.
"While a single large stream like Netflix can’t be split across multiple Internet connections with Connectify Dispatch, it will be assigned to the fastest one while other requests will be intelligently routed to other connections."

Why don't you explain technically how you managed to get a single stream of data from speedtest to load balance....or maybe you made that up
 
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