Dual Ethernet Use

[bjaminnyc]

I am currently building a new system planning on replacing a Phenom II X6 with a Bulldozer FX-8150 when its finally released. I am considering buying ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX, which has 2 Ethernet ports. This will be my primary home PC used for business, encoding, DVR, watching TV, security cameras, and occasional light gaming. I just bought the house and its already wired with CAT 6. I know it's a lot to do simultaneously with one PC but I'm hoping BD's 8 cores will allow me to manage quite a bit without having to run multiple systems. Unfortunately, I likely will end up installing the Ceton DVR and Security Cam DVR software each into separate older boxes I already own due to 24/7 operation and severely overclocking my BD will be too hard to resist.

Total setup will consist of the aforementioned parts as well a SSD, 2 x 2TB platter drives, Win 7 Ultimate, 8 GB DDR3 1600, Ceton InfiniTV 4 Quad-tuner, 6870, and 3 x 23" 1080p's. Possibly will be using a 4th 1,600x1,200 monitor I have if the desktop gets too crowded with the cam feeds.


My question is can I essential create a dual network environment to avoid congestion?

Scenario 1; (1 PC)
Port 1 connected to switch 1 - Internet, home IP security cameras, NAS, WIFI access point
Port 2 connected to switch 2 - Internet, Streaming Video from DVR to HTPC's & Consoles, rest of house wired internet

Scenario 2; (3 PC's)
Port 1 connected to switch 1 - Internet, home IP security camera server (PC 2), NAS, WIFI access point
Port 2 connected to switch 2 - Internet, Ceton InfiniTV 4 DVR Server (PC 3),rest of house wired internet

Pretty much the same question with 2 different setups. Is this possible to accomplish with Win 7 Ultimate? I realize that congestion at the NIC on the BD PC will be limited in Scenario 2, regardless it would an interesting project.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Emerald]

As far as I know Windows7 only supports one NIC at a time. the Second NIC will only work for a internal network that uses a different IP scheme then the one the internet is on.

Since I don't know the software for the NIC, there might be a chance to load balance the NICs

 

[bjaminnyc]

I've read a bit about load balancing 2 separate internet connections in Windows 7, it sounds as though that its not too difficult. However, I will not be installing a second modem my ISP at this point is plenty fast.

Your answer does make complete sense. If I were to go the one computer route and isolate the IP Cams, and NAS on NIC 1, then everything else including internet on NIC 2 it would make marginal sense to try to utilize the 2 ports.

I'll probably end up going with multiple machines (which is a much better solution anyway) to manage the DVR & CAM PVR. After spending time thinking about my post I realized I can just feed the cams to a separate hub to mitigate switching traffic on the internet/streaming hub.

In addition, all of this worrying about traffic might be a bit silly considering the house already has gigabit cabling installed. I've just never had the opportunity to build I house network the way I want it from the ground up with all of the pain in *ss stuff already done (cams&CAT6). I imagine I would be well served by a couple decent 1000Mbps switches, and call it a day.

Thanks for your help.

 

[hang-the-9]

Setup a second PC in the basement or somewhere to run the security cameras. If you use a switch, the data over the ports will be sent only to the ports that need it, it's not a hub where data is broadcast over the whole network. Use remote access to connect to that computer, you can run it "headless", with maybe a monitor near it in case something breaks and you can't remote into it. Same thing for the DVR computer.