Teaming Lan add-on cards

[aoenate]

Hey guys

I'm looking into building a new computer in the near future. the 680i is my favorite by far, yet it costs alo more than the others. The feature i like most about the 680i that the other platforms dont have is the teaming lan.

I havent been able to find any teaming lan add-on cards (found two, but they are over $160 dollars.) Are their any cheaper soulations?

My second options for a chipset are the 650i or 965 ($100-150ish) could i add on another card to get the teaming lan for cheaper than the 680i ($230)?

Thank for the help
Nate

 

[kamel5547]

Hey guys

I'm looking into building a new computer in the near future. the 680i is my favorite by far, yet it costs alo more than the others. The feature i like most about the 680i that the other platforms dont have is the teaming lan.

I havent been able to find any teaming lan add-on cards (found two, but they are over $160 dollars.) Are their any cheaper soulations?

My second options for a chipset are the 650i or 965 ($100-150ish) could i add on another card to get the teaming lan for cheaper than the 680i ($230)?

Thank for the help
Nate

IMHO teaming is a waste unless you have a local (i.e. LAN) reason to do it. Seeing as your internet pipe is at most 10 Mb, a standard lan connection has more than enough throughput. Generally teaming is for highly used servers (think office file server, database,web server) or redundancy. I would venture to say that you will see no benefit... spend the money on something else (get a faster hard drive for example).

Generally teaming requires some level of software support (driver,bios,etc) so I think your plan of finding a cheaper solution is pretty much shot as their are not many options available. Seeing as this isn't a big thing even at the enthusiast level I doubt there are many add-on options other than those you found.

 

[aoenate]

Thanks for the responce kamel

I understand that my internet and normal operations won't see any performance boot going with dual lan. Only reason to go teaming lan is for lan parties and file backups. For some reason i'm the file server (BF1942updates + DC + DCfinal) at lan parties. At times i will have three or four people taking these files at the same time.

I also back up large files/groups of files onto my computer when re-formatting a friends computer or saving the 10 gigs of family pictures to my computer. I realize the connection will only be as fast as the slowest link (the single line from the other computers)

How does the 680i do the lan teaming? via software, hardware or both?
I've heard of people teaming two different network cards via software in windows 2000 server, but have been unable to find any way to team the lan connections in windows XP Pro. Teaming lan is something I'd like to implement, but i really don't need it because i wont be using it all that much, maybe once a month. Maybe money better spent on a gigabyte switch?

Nate

 

[cwilliams255]

well if everyone is running at a gigabit and the switch you are currently using at your lan parties is 100mbit then replacing this will make a big difference to the file tranfers you are doing