Why 2 RJ-45 LAN ports?

[ForYourHealth]

I'm shopping for mobos and I've noticed that as they get a little more expensive, sometimes a second RJ-45 LAN port is added on the mobo I/Os.

What is the purpose of this?

 

[C12Friedman]

The idea behind it is twice the bandwidth. Of course it takes two modems to use that effectively. Another advantage is redundancy - sometimes (not always) the connectors use diferent controllers, one might be Marvell while the other Intel, there may be an advantage redundancy wise. Of course in a crowded network you do get the advantage of two connections (if there are alot of computers at your house...). It is kind of a neat option but it seems you do pay a lot for it.

 

[seamus_ar]

There are three purposes for this, two of which were pointed out above, link aggregation (to increase the bandwidth), and failover, which keeps you connected if for any reason one link drops.

The third purpose is to make the computer "dual-homed," so that it can talk to two different networks or VLAN's simultaneously. One popular reason to do this with Linux is to make a roll-your-own router or firewall.

 

[ForYourHealth]

Best answer selected by ForYourHealth.

 

[ForYourHealth]

Thanks for the responses guys!

For my purposes, it doesn't seem to be worth the money.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr