Configure network cards

[Pierre Dabrunst]

I got a question.

I got my on-board nic and a PCI nic as well in my home server and I want to do a kind of "stupid" confiiguration.
NOTE: I am currently running Ubuntu Server 20.04, but I want to move to Windows Server 2019 (got a license for cheap).

I want to run each nic in a special "mode" where one nic handles downloads and the other handles upload.

 

Is this possible to do, and how would I do it? I am not a guru on this stuff, so any kind of help would be appreciated.

[Dujith]

I dont think you can set 1 nic to just download or upload. And tbh even if it could, there would be no reason todo so.

If you have a gigabit nic then it will support 1gpbs down and up at the same time.

 

You can however team them to balance load or failover or filter for certain traffic.

[Pierre Dabrunst]

2 minutes ago, Dujith said:

I dont think you can set 1 nic to just download or upload. And tbh even if it could, there would be no reason todo so.

If you have a gigabit nic then it will support 1gpbs down and up at the same time.

 

You can however team them to balance load or failover or filter for certain traffic.

So what you're saying that a 1gbps link is "technically" a 2Gbps link since it can handle gigabit speeds at the same time in each direction?

[Dujith]

Yes, full duplex means it can do that speed both ways at once.

[Pierre Dabrunst]

Just now, Dujith said:

Yes, full duplex means it can do that speed both ways at once.

Okay, I actually never knew that.  You learn something every day.

What card would you recommend as the "primary" card if I would do a teaming setup? Both the onboard nic and the PCI nic does gigabit, I just want to make sure that the box does not lose network connection for a unplugged cable or something like that and want the best nic as primary.

 

[Pierre Dabrunst]

I should also note that it is a old motherboard with DDR2 and a dualcore AMD Athon CPU

[Dujith]

3 minutes ago, Pierre Dabrunst said:

What card would you recommend as the "primary" card if I would do a teaming setup? Both the onboard nic and the PCI nic does gigabit, I just want to make sure that the box does not lose network connection for a unplugged cable or something like that and want the best nic as primary.

Teaming would do just that. There should be a failover configuration for that. 

However i do not know more about that, perhaps someone else could help you with the specifics.

Plus, there are load of guides for just this. Just search for NIC Team failover server 2016

[Jarsky]

17 minutes ago, Pierre Dabrunst said:

So what you're saying that a 1gbps link is "technically" a 2Gbps link since it can handle gigabit speeds at the same time in each direction?

Keep in mind, that doesnt mean you can do 2Gbps (250MB/s) transfers, unless you had Link Aggregation (which needs to be supported by your switch)

 

16 minutes ago, Pierre Dabrunst said:

What card would you recommend as the "primary" card if I would do a teaming setup? Both the onboard nic and the PCI nic does gigabit, I just want to make sure that the box does not lose network connection for a unplugged cable or something like that and want the best nic as primary.

You will probably find you wont be able to team them using mixed chipsets like that. Best to stick with one of the Intel chipset cards for the best compatibility. 

Intel 82576 based cards, come with quad ports, support teaming (incl link aggregation) and are fairly cheap such as this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-E1G44ETBLK-82576GB-Gigabit-Quad-Port-PCI-E-x4-Server-Adapter-DELL-HM9JY/133163739921

[Windows7ge]

Is there a particular reason you would want to do such a setup?