Whats the benefit of having to Ethernet ports on your motherboard?

[Nonco]

Whats the benefit of having two Ethernet ports on your motherboard?

 

Ive seen them becoming more common these days, especially with skylake, But never understood what the benefit of having 2 ports would be?

 

Its probably a stupid question but I am curious non-the-less.

 

EDIT: _{omg just noticed i missed the 'w' in the title for two haha}

[SPG]

by...not spending extra money on a networking card? as for two ports, no idea...I jsut know it wont double your speed

[robert1339]

Moar WI FI

[W-L]

 

Ive seen them becoming more common these days, especially with skylake, But never understood what the benefit of having 2 would be?

Its probably a stupid question but I am curious non-the-less.

EDIT: _{omg just noticed i missed the 'w' in the title for two haha}

 

Wired ethernet is basically the 1st choice in terms of reliable connections but as for why more than one it's usually for reliability, or the ability to be on more than one network at once.

[Nonco]

Wired ethernet is basically the 1st choice in terms of reliable connections but as for why more than one it's usually for reliability, or the ability to be on more than one network at once.

 

Yeah I understand its more reliable.

 

If they wanted to be connected to multiple servers, that would be all done at a switch anyway though?

[jato_127]

used mainly for connecting to two separate networks. for example one to connect to a public network(internet) another to connect to a storage server or private network.

[W-L]

Yeah I understand its more reliable.

 

If they wanted to be connected to multiple servers, that would be all done at a switch anyway though?

 

Ideally yes but sometimes you might want separate networks for security or other reasons, you can also connect it directly to say a NAS or storage array if there is a lot of data.

[Arty]

daisy chaining computers

[EliasNM]

^^^ I had to delete what I typed since he said it. Just to add to it, its not for more speed, that is ISP-sided.

[tt2468]

Usually 2 ports are for LAN storage, but unless your drives, and NAS device are fast enough, 2 ports are kinda unnecessary.

[yzbd]

What benefits are there? I'll list a few below, however a Google search can give you a ton of useful things you could try.

 

1) Failover protection.

2) The "cool" factor.

3) Double your bandwidth - not speeds.

4) Turn your computer into a pfSense box!

5) Loop-back?!

 

Overall, the average person or gamer has no need for dual ports. Reasoning: It will more then likely have 1-2 Reltek NICs, which are known for their evilness (not working correctly). You would also need to buy managed switch which could run you a few hundred bucks.

 

Just buy the best bang for your buck and don't worry about onboard NICs. You could also upgrade later with PCI card for extra NICs & features (signal,dual, or quad Intel NIC card. Always buy Intel PCI NICs or their OEM counterpart (Dell,IBM,HP,etc) which normally are rebranded Intel cards.

[ygohome]

I have a computer with two ports.  One of them was built into the mobo.  But I initially had trouble configuring it to be recognized at startup (it is a RHEL linux server).  So I installed an Intel PCI NIC which worked great.  I eventually got the onboard mobo port to work also.  Now I've got two ports and if both are connected to the router then they each get a different DHCP assigned internal IP address from the router.

 

as to the advantages of what I described, I have no idea other than failover... I can access the server from either of the two IPs.