home server networking

[shedicus90]

ok so i will just straight in, im jerry rigging my old mobo to use as a server, mobo is a asus  rog crosshair ii. it has two ethernet ports but they are not the same, one of them is the marvell controller but they are both gigabit ethernet and support AI NET2, what i want to do is use both ports on my mobo and link to my netgear gs108 v3 to efectivly give me 2gigabit ethernet (if it works that way). so long storey short is this possible with this setup and is it worth it, th server will be running on cat 6e cable and is around 20m from main hub witch distributes to another netgear hub of similar setup. just to clear it up i have my main virgin hub running two netgear switchs. the gs108 would be set up under sairs with server using two cables to conect to ethernet ports on mobo and 1 20m cat6e running to the main virgin hub.

 

thoughts and advice, i dont have any spar money two by any special networking cards. 

[JWMutant]

I think I understand what you mean.

 

Generally if a person wants to use dual NIC they configure them as one sending packets and the other receiving.

 

Long term gain may not be what you expect however.

 

One site I used when I was playing around with dual NIC  is http://www.ni.com/white-paper/12558/en/

[shedicus90]

yeah sorry i have difficulty explaining what i really mean, its an adhd thing. yeah basicly wanting do do a nic setup using only what i have at hand. so long term what are the drawback(s) ?

[Zergom]

Unless you're bonding them together, you won't actually get 2gbps (I think you'd need to go the Linux or BSD route, as Windows doesn't support this properly). You'll get 2 x 1gbps links that can be accessed simultaneously, allowing you to max out both interfaces at the same time. In Windows Server 2012, they call this NIC teaming, which can be switch independent, but you may have to configure MultiPath Input/Output (MPIO) to see the full benefit. A switch dependent solution would be Link Aggregation.

[shedicus90]

thank you guys, yeah i didnt necessarily think i would get a 2gigabit connection but as there are multiply pc's connected to the network i may help even out the bandwidth.  it's general use will be streaming music and video files 

[shedicus90]

i was going to try a few different o/s was going to start with win10 as it's pre installed. an afterthought though is that the switch itself is only capable of 1gigabit so it would serve no perpouse to try using 2 cables.

[shedicus90]

would you recommend freenas over using windows or am i best installing windows server, note i have very little experience with windows server o/s's