On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 5:35 PM, Gene Giannamore
<[email protected]> wrote:
> We are wondering if we have the server’s second nic be the only
> thing on the second Comcast internet connection, if that would help the WAN
> users (faster TS experience).
If the TS clients are currently competing for scarce Internet
resources on the Comcast feed, then sure.
Make sure that's really your problem. If the problem is, for
example, that the Internet is not a LAN (amazing how many people don't
get this), you're just wasting money.
It may be possible to address the problem with a single Internet
feed and a gateway which understands QoS. It depends on just how
(over)loaded the feed is.
You may want to look at Comcast's symmetric feed offerings.
Standard Comcast is asymmetric, often by more than a 10:1 ratio in
favor of incoming traffic ("downloads"). TS will be largely outgoing.
If you're dedicating a feed to it, might as well get the best fit.
Comcast quoted us $300/month for 2 Mbit/sec symmetric, I think.
I recommend having both Comcast feeds come in to the same
firewall/router/gateway/whatever. This yields better management and
*much* better security. I would strongly recommend against just
connecting a public feed to a general-purpose server. Let the router
handle things like directing traffic to the TS box. This also gives
you the flexibility to reassign Internet resources should needs
change.
Given the above, you don't need to use a second NIC in the server,
and I would recommend steering clear of multihoming a general-purpose
Windows server. Some stuff (including Microsoft's) can get
confus(ed|ing). Much of that can be addressed, but it's complexity
you don't need. The single NIC has plenty of resources to serve your
TS clients -- it's the Internet that's going to be the bottleneck. If
you've got such demands on the single NIC that congestion is an issue,
I'd argue you better off with QoS than a second NIC. (If you've got a
managed switch.)
That said, if you bind just terminal services to a second NIC, and
unbind everything else from same NIC, and unbind TS from the first
NIC, you should steer clear of any possible multihoming confusions.
-- Ben
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
