If you were really wanting to use more than one card, I would suggest reading the "ifenslave" man page. ifenslave will allow you to bind two or more ethernet cards together with the same ip address, effectively doubling your data rate.
-jason
Glenn Hocking wrote:
Hi All
Has anyone put any thought and testing whether it is better to have one network card with multiple IP assigned or 2-3 net cards with separate IP numbers.
Actual specs, The cards are all 10/100 Intel's connected to the net via a 10mb/s ethernet with direct public IPs. The secondary IPs are private local addresses for local backup and maintenance.
My thoughts are that as network speed is not really an issue it may be better to have only the one net card to reduce points of failure. Reliability being more important here than speed.
I would also expect that the system would be doing a lot more dma/irq and OS switching with the extra PCI network cards.
Does anyone have any similar experience or thoughts that may help with a decision to install second network cards or not.
Kind regards Glenn Hocking Publish Media Pty Ltd http://www.sitegeneral.com/
