Use of multiple ethernet ports on motherboards

Michael McSharry

Active Member
I have seen that higher end "gaming" motherboards have 2 or 4 ethernet ports. In a typical home environment how does one utilize the additional ports? Is it perhaps something like a "dedicated" port between the media server and the extender?
 
It might be handy if you wanted to use your PC as a router. I don't see much point to it given the inexpensive linksys and SMC devices that are available.
 
In the commerical world servers often have teaming capability. Requires proper support from the switch they are connected to and I seriously doubt that any gaming boards support this properly.....
 
An example of what you could use a second network connection for would be to have a dedicated network for a specific task. For example, I have a network HD video encoder called the HD Homerun. This device has two ATSC/QAM tuners and a network connection. Instead of hooking up a capture device directly to your computer, you can use the HD Homerun as a network encoder capture device. You could choose to have multiple HD Homeruns to give you more tuners. If you wanted to make sure that no network traffic could possibly interfere with the HD Homeruns operation over the network, you could plug the HD Homerun's into a dedicated switch on a second subnet and then plug your second network jack on your computer to that same switch. That way, the computer can still communicate on the existing network as well as the dedicated HD Homerun network. The computer could act as a router between the two networks if you wanted. Although, in this scenario there is no need for network #1 to be able to talk to network #2. I'm not actually doing this at this time (just have one HD Homerun) but it's just an example of what you could use a second network connection for.
 
At work we use multiple network cards to ensure that user 'traffic' does not interfere with our data aquisition system. Although ethernet isn't 'real time' it can get very close to that if you control the traffic.
 
I have seen that higher end "gaming" motherboards have 2 or 4 ethernet ports. In a typical home environment how does one utilize the additional ports? Is it perhaps something like a "dedicated" port between the media server and the extender?

You can either use the separate ports as:

1.) On separate networks (PC as a Router statement above). The ports MUST be on separate network segments.
2.) Aggregate - Using 802.3ad LACP. Will create a 2+ Gig channel. The switch must support this as well. In Cisco-land this is known as Etherchannel, other vendors call it Link Aggregation.
3.) Failover/Redundancy - This is vendor proprietary and the motherboard must support it. Here you configure both ports on the same network segment, but only one is used at a time. If the primary goes down, traffic is switched to the other. Usually these ports are cabled to separate switches.

I believe 2,3 are done at the driver level in Windows, so the MB NIC drivers must support it. 2 requires a switch that supports it. 3 doesn't require special switch support but can cause issues on some switches if Gratuitous ARP is not a part of the solution (HP for example).

Some misconceptions about aggregation are that it gives you 2+ Gig of bandwidth. This is true if you are running multiple connections, but connections are not split across the links. So, for example, if you are doing a large FTP transfer it would only be able to use 1 of the links. This is done to prevent packets being received out of order, which would cause re-transimissions/issues. Also it is doubtful a normal PC motherboard can fully utilize 1 Gig, much less 2 or more.

Basically, unless you are going to route 1.), the extra ports are pretty much useless for home use. It is pretty much a marketing ploy.
 
If you are referring to solutions such as the 680i boards from gigabyte and the like, they are intended for gaming servers (where you are hosting multiple online connections for people playing games). In that instance, they also support NIC teaming to combine two gigabit connections. The intent is to minimize lag. These are high end gaming rigs.

How well it works from that perspective, I am not sure. Sounds real cool though.
 
If you are referring to solutions such as the 680i boards from gigabyte and the like, they are intended for gaming servers (where you are hosting multiple online connections for people playing games). In that instance, they also support NIC teaming to combine two gigabit connections. The intent is to minimize lag. These are high end gaming rigs.

How well it works from that perspective, I am not sure. Sounds real cool though.

So how is 4 gig going to help you over your 1.5meg or 3meg DSL line? Even large companies don't have a 1 Gig internet connection. Not to mention it is highly unlikely the motherboard can even sustain a 1GB+ data rate itself. High end servers have a hard time maintaining 1GB. I'm sorry but unless you are using one of these MB's as a router, those other ports will contribute to your gaming experience about as much as the blue LED on your fan.

Don't let them fool you with their marketing hype. Those ports are worthless. Other examples of marketing hype is 3MB+ DSL, etc. But hey, it's your money....
 
If you are referring to solutions such as the 680i boards from gigabyte and the like, they are intended for gaming servers (where you are hosting multiple online connections for people playing games). In that instance, they also support NIC teaming to combine two gigabit connections. The intent is to minimize lag. These are high end gaming rigs.

How well it works from that perspective, I am not sure. Sounds real cool though.

So how is 4 gig going to help you over your 1.5meg or 3meg DSL line? Even large companies don't have a 1 Gig internet connection. Not to mention it is highly unlikely the motherboard can even sustain a 1GB+ data rate itself. High end servers have a hard time maintaining 1GB. I'm sorry but unless you are using one of these MB's as a router, those other ports will contribute to your gaming experience about as much as the blue LED on your fan.

Don't let them fool you with their marketing hype. Those ports are worthless. Other examples of marketing hype is 3MB+ DSL, etc. But hey, it's your money....

I think he's talking about LAN party situations
 
LAN folks crack me up - it hasn't changed since I was highly involved in hosting LAN's here in ABQ. They sell these boards that might, in theory, be able to support hundred of gamers to the end users. Not needed.
 
That is what I was referencing (and these are motherboards that are around $300) they also support multiple video cards. Are they needed? Probably not. How many people actually utilize them? Probably not a lot. There are a lot of people who like to have cool toys though.

I have heard of people using these as server boards as it was cheaper than high end multi-nic cards. How well it worked, again, I am not sure.
 
Servers and switches have a lot of internal architecture that help them push these kinds of speeds. A little chip on a motherboard doesn't have that kind of capability. It's on a shared bus. And if you look into you typical SOHO switch it doesn't either. You'll find a lot of bottlenecks in the internal architecture. You might find 1GB that serves 4 or 8 ports but not 4GB serving them. This is very common even in business class switches costing thousands of dollars.
 
We used to use dual-homed (two ethernet ports) on machines that were used for development in a company I worked for. This allowed the machine to sit on the corporate network and yet still have access to and be able to participate in software development on a completely separate network. You can also use the second NIC (or more) for virtual machines these days.

I can see a use for an extra Ethernet port or two if you had this need, or perhaps a specialized connection need that uses Ethernet, or as mentioned above a separate network for some type of critical traffic. Since in most OS' you can assign additional IP addresses to a single NIC these days, there really isn't a need for additional NICs in most home machines.
 
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