Bridging Nics

[fate0n3]

I have an Asus P5N32-SLI SE mb which has 2 onboard nics. Is there any advantages or disadvantages to bridging the NICs together in windows?

 

[michaelahess]

Not unless you need to bridge two networks together. It won't give you more speed if that's what you're thinking. About the only thing 2 nics are good for is having the internet on one and your local network on the other, then you can use a good software firewall to firewall your network.

Edit: I always use my second one for testing, leave it on the 192.168.x.x networks most equipment comes on.

 

[bberson]

About the only thing 2 nics are good for is having the internet on one and your local network on the other, then you can use a good software firewall to firewall your network.

And then your life becomes exponentially more complicated when you discover the intricacies of OS multihoming, default gateways, static routes, etc. as you try to figure out why things don't function as you thought they should.

The interesting thing is that so many vendors are pushing motherboards with two NICs, even though very few people really know how to take advantage of both, even less have true opportunities to take advantage of both, and since the motherboard vendors tend to mix Ethernet chipset vendors, it becomes more awkward or impossible to do the really cool stuff like load aggregation, balancing and failover sets if you had a switch that supported it.

Or maybe I'm just too cynical.

-Brad

 

[michaelahess]

You're just being too cynical, dumb people just use ICS with two nics

You forgot to mention host entries btw :lol:

 

[bberson]

You're just being too cynical, dumb people just use ICS with two nics You forgot to mention host entries btw :lol:

ICS. Auugh! {running in terror}

Well, yeah, in the absence of NetBIOS broadcasts, DNS, WINS, etc...

Oh, raise yer hands, who's using *IX?

 

[croc]

Yep...

You can create a great firewall that way... Give nic 1 a fixed IP of 192.168.01. with a gateway of 192.168.0.2. Now give the other nic a fixed ip of 192.168.0.2 with a gateway of 192.168.0.1.

Now bridge them. Now ping something. See? It works...