Wondering if I can connect my nas directly to my PC with 2 identical 10 gig nics

[Owsleygarcia95]

So I am currently waiting on the rest of the parts to arrive for my first nas. The 8 18TB drive raid 6 array should have a theoretical peak speed somewhere around 800+ MBs. The fastest internet in my area( I've called every ISP) is T-mobile home 5g and that's what I have. I haven't even bothered hooking up gigabit ethernet to my current PC because I'm getting 200-300Mbps down with WiFi 6 and it's 20 times what I got through At&t. 

 

I've read that you can connect a nas directly to a PC with no router or switch. I would like to just buy two 35 - 40$ 10 gig identical nics ( Intel X520-DA1, with Intel 82599EN Controller, Single SFP+ Port). Connect these directly for file transfers. Use the gigabit port on the nas to connect to my 5g gateway/wifi6 router for an internet connection, and continue using the WiFi 6 for my computer's internet. Will this work properly. If not any suggestions? 

[Levent]

Your internet speed has no relevance over your LAN transfer speed. Answer to the question in the title is also, yes.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Yup you can do this. Just setup a IP on the same subnet for both.

 

You can even do 40GBe for that budget.

[Owsleygarcia95]

I just listed that because it seems pointless to buy a really fancy router or switch when my internet speed can't use it. I just wanted to make sure doing this between the 2 nics will give me 10gig transfers, and that I can use a different method in each machine to connect to the internet.

[Owsleygarcia95]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yup you can do this. Just setup a IP on the same subnet for both.

 

You can even do 40GBe for that budget.

Lol I don't think I need 40. Am using recertified seagate exos 20 18tb, got the first 2 for 150 each but I could only buy 2 with the promotion. They are only 170 with no discount. Still a lot of money, but I would never have considered this with the prices of new drives. I'm gambling that replacing a couple drives over the next few years will be cheaper than the warranty. Don't know exactly but the whole thing is coming in at about 2k. Everything new except a 99 dollar 5600G CPU from Ebay. 

 

I generally know how to get into my network settings, and have done simple things like changing my dns server. I am relearning everything because I haven't had a PC since highschool almost 20 years ago (just got mine 6 months ago). Could you explain how I setup an IP on the same subnet for each one? Would I need a static IP then? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Lol I don't think I need 40. Am using recertified seagate exos 20 18tb, got the first 2 for 150 each but I could only buy 2 with the promotion. They are only 170 with no discount. Still a lot of money, but I would never have considered this with the prices of new drives. I'm gambling that replacing a couple drives over the next few years will be cheaper than the warranty. Don't know exactly but the whole thing is coming in at about 2k. Everything new except a 99 dollar 5600G CPU from Ebay. 

 

I generally know how to get into my network settings, and have done simple things like changing my dns server. I am relearning everything because I haven't had a PC since highschool almost 20 years ago (just got mine 6 months ago). Could you explain how I setup an IP on the same subnet for each one? Would I need a static IP then? 

Set a IP on both boxes like this

 

Try something like:

NAS: 192.168.69.1/24

PC: 192.168.69.2/24

 

Then on the PC, use the 192.168.69.1 IP address when mounting the share on the NAS.

[Eigenvektor]

18 minutes ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Could you explain how I setup an IP on the same subnet for each one? Would I need a static IP then? 

You would simply configure a static IP on both 10 GbE NICs, yes. Since there's only two and no router involved, no DHCP for automatic IP assignment involved/needed.

 

You can just pick two IPs from a private IP range that does not conflict with the range used by your router.

 

So for example if that one is using 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0 you could use 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 instead. Or use 10.0.0.1 and .2.

 

The netmaks defines what belongs to the same subnet. So 255.255.255.0 means its the same subnet as long as it starts with 192.168.0.

 

So 192.168.1 would be a different subnet in this case. Basically any number other than zero in the third place (or a different number in first or second)

 

There are three private IP ranges, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16-31.x.x. So a lot of possibilities to choose from.

[Owsleygarcia95]

17 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

You would simply configure a static IP on both 10 GbE NICs, yes. Since there's only two and no router involved, no DHCP for automatic IP assignment involved/needed.

 

You can just pick two IPs from a private IP range that does not conflict with the range used by your router.

 

So for example if that one is using 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0 you could use 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 instead. Or use 10.0.0.1 and .2.

 

The netmaks defines what belongs to the same subnet. So 255.255.255.0 means its the same subnet as long as it starts with 192.168.0.

 

So 192.168.1 would be a different subnet in this case. Basically any number other than zero in the third place (or a different number in first or second)

 

There are three private IP ranges, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16-31.x.x. So a lot of possibilities to choose from.

Thank you so much for the explanation. Had to look over it a few times but I think I understand now. Hopefully I can get it to work easily after all the hardware shows up and gets assembled lol.

[Owsleygarcia95]

29 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

You would simply configure a static IP on both 10 GbE NICs, yes. Since there's only two and no router involved, no DHCP for automatic IP assignment involved/needed.

 

You can just pick two IPs from a private IP range that does not conflict with the range used by your router.

 

So for example if that one is using 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0 you could use 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 instead. Or use 10.0.0.1 and .2.

 

The netmaks defines what belongs to the same subnet. So 255.255.255.0 means its the same subnet as long as it starts with 192.168.0.

 

So 192.168.1 would be a different subnet in this case. Basically any number other than zero in the third place (or a different number in first or second)

 

There are three private IP ranges, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16-31.x.x. So a lot of possibilities to choose from.

The nic cards have a single spf+ port. I'm assuming I should use this cable? It's the best selling spf patch cable on Amazon. Just want to make sure. 

 

 

It's only 7.99. Is there a better brand worth paying for or is it all basically the same thing?

[Needfuldoer]

10 minutes ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

The nic cards have a single spf+ port. I'm assuming I should use this cable? It's the best selling spf patch cable on Amazon. Just want to make sure. 

 

It's only 7.99. Is there a better brand worth paying for or is it all basically the same thing?

Yup, that should work.

 

Those SFP+ DACs are pretty cheap on eBay too, if you need a longer one. (Most of the cost is in the SFPs.)

[Owsleygarcia95]

On 1/6/2024 at 4:52 PM, Eigenvektor said:

You would simply configure a static IP on both 10 GbE NICs, yes. Since there's only two and no router involved, no DHCP for automatic IP assignment involved/needed.

 

You can just pick two IPs from a private IP range that does not conflict with the range used by your router.

 

So for example if that one is using 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0 you could use 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 instead. Or use 10.0.0.1 and .2.

 

The netmaks defines what belongs to the same subnet. So 255.255.255.0 means its the same subnet as long as it starts with 192.168.0.

 

So 192.168.1 would be a different subnet in this case. Basically any number other than zero in the third place (or a different number in first or second)

 

There are three private IP ranges, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16-31.x.x. So a lot of possibilities to choose from.

Hey. Ended up switching form intel nic's to the cheap Mellanox connectx-3's ( no windows 11 drivers on the intels). I got everything working except my 10gig link ( just now trying it). Truenas scale was quite the learning curve for me, but I figured out everything I wanted. 

 

Was just curious what I'm supposed to put for the default gateway. 

 

I was going to put this on my windows PC:

 

IP address: 192.168.1.1

subnet: 255.255.255.0

Default gateway: 192.168.1.0

 

DNS servers: googles I think 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

 

and the same thing on the nas except 192.168.1.2 for the IP.

 

Is this right? I understand your post well I just still don't get exactly what the default gateway is. 

[Eigenvektor]

6 hours ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Is this right? I understand your post well I just still don't get exactly what the default gateway is. 

Simply put, the default gateway is the IP address of your router. If you directly connect two PCs, there is no router, so there is no need for a default gateway and no need for a DNS server. In other words, leave them empty.

 

A device can only communicate with other devices that are part of its own network. So if your IP is 192.168.1.1 and the netmask is 255.255.255.0 (or /24 for short), then it can only talk to others with an IP in the range 192.168.1.x. If the netmask is 255.255.0.0 (or /16) it can talk to anything with an IP that starts with 192.168.x.x.

 

If it wants to talk to a machine with an IP outside of this range (say, Google's DNS server on 8.8.8.8), it will send this request to its default gateway instead, who will (hopefully) take care of things.

 

So it would send it to the router, who in turn would send it to the ISPs router (because that is the router's default gateway). It would continue to be forwarded in this way until it eventually reached the target network/target computer (and the response then traveled the same route in reverse).

 

Since you have a direct connection, there's no way to communicate out to the internet over this network card. That's the job of the second network card, which should have a different IP, the router's IP as gateway and a DNS server. This should normally not require any manual configuration, since the router likely acts as a DHCP server that automatically assigns an IP and all the other settings to connected network cards.

[LIGISTX]

8 hours ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Hey. Ended up switching form intel nic's to the cheap Mellanox connectx-3's ( no windows 11 drivers on the intels). I got everything working except my 10gig link ( just now trying it). Truenas scale was quite the learning curve for me, but I figured out everything I wanted. 

 

Was just curious what I'm supposed to put for the default gateway. 

 

I was going to put this on my windows PC:

 

IP address: 192.168.1.1

subnet: 255.255.255.0

Default gateway: 192.168.1.0

 

DNS servers: googles I think 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

 

and the same thing on the nas except 192.168.1.2 for the IP.

 

Is this right? I understand your post well I just still don't get exactly what the default gateway is. 

If this is in fact how you set it up, that’s likely incorrect, at least assuming your current gigabit LAN is on 192.168.1.1. 
 

You need to pick a private subnet that is different than the current subnet. Most consumer routers default to 192.168.1.1, thus my stating you may have done this wrong. 

[Needfuldoer]

14 hours ago, Owsleygarcia95 said:

Hey. Ended up switching form intel nic's to the cheap Mellanox connectx-3's ( no windows 11 drivers on the intels). I got everything working except my 10gig link ( just now trying it). Truenas scale was quite the learning curve for me, but I figured out everything I wanted. 

 

Was just curious what I'm supposed to put for the default gateway. 

 

I was going to put this on my windows PC:

 

IP address: 192.168.1.1

subnet: 255.255.255.0

Default gateway: 192.168.1.0

 

DNS servers: googles I think 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

 

and the same thing on the nas except 192.168.1.2 for the IP.

 

Is this right? I understand your post well I just still don't get exactly what the default gateway is. 

If you're wiring two computers directly to each other, and neither of those computers is routing Internet traffic for the other, you don't need to set a default gateway or DNS servers.

 

The default gateway is the device that all other devices on a subnet look to as the "door" out to other networks. If one computer is routing traffic for the other, it becomes the default gateway. If both computers have their own connection to the Internet and this link will only pass traffic between them, then there's no gateway on that subnet!

 

DNS resolves host names to IP addresses. If you're just connecting between two machines, you don't need to run DNS.

 

Is your regular Gigabit network using the 192.168.1.x/24 address space? If it is you want to change your 10 gig connection to something else, otherwise routing gets all kinds of confused.

[Owsleygarcia95]

3 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

If you're wiring two computers directly to each other, and neither of those computers is routing Internet traffic for the other, you don't need to set a default gateway or DNS servers.

 

The default gateway is the device that all other devices on a subnet look to as the "door" out to other networks. If one computer is routing traffic for the other, it becomes the default gateway. If both computers have their own connection to the Internet and this link will only pass traffic between them, then there's no gateway on that subnet!

 

DNS resolves host names to IP addresses. If you're just connecting between two machines, you don't need to run DNS.

 

Is your regular Gigabit network using the 192.168.1.x/24 address space? If it is you want to change your 10 gig connection to something else, otherwise routing gets all kinds of confused.

Thanks. No, I read through the beginning of this thread before I attempted anything. So I knew they had to be on different subnets. The gigabit was on 192.168.12.x, so I just used 192.168.1.x so it would be easy to remember. 

 

Got everything working last night. Got just shy of 1000MB/s on a test from ssd to ssd. To the drives was getting abou half of that ( currently only have 4 of the 8 drives installed, so thinking that will increase).

 

Anyways, thank you guys, I really couldn't have done this without the forum. I got everything working on the NAS that I wanted, so I'm pretty happy. Phanteks hard drive brackets are out of stock everywhere in the U.S., but I've got some that are supposedly exactly the same coming from Ali Express( just departed from import customs ). So whenever those show up going to wipe my current pool and make a raid z2. Thanks again for all the help!