How can i use 2 different Lan connection on one computer?

[mariushm]

The reason why some motherboards have two network cards is because it's often a good idea to have one network card create the connection to the internet , and anoher network card to be used to connect the computer to other computers or devices that can communicate through ethernet cable.

So one network card goes to your internet router, and the other could go to a network swith where other devices are also plugged in.

 

For example let's say you have a laser printer which can receive jobs through either USB cable or through ethernet cable. You may not want to connect the printer to your internet router because some hacker could then connect to your printer and mess with your printer.

But you could connect the printer to a network switch and then connect the switch to your second network card (or you could connect the printer directly to 2nd card)

 

Often, big websites (like this forum for example) have one computer serving pages to people but the data (the comments, the user info and so on) is stored into big databases that are stored on other computers. Those computers have no need to be accessed directly to the internet because only the computer or computers building the page you see can read the data from databases.

So those database servers are connected to a separate network switch and the web server computer uses the 2nd network card to connect to that switch.

 

anyway long story short

you have two network cards, you don't have to use both, you won't have better speeds if you connect both to your internet router.

the 2nd network card can be useful for some things and adding extra one to mb is cheap enough to be worth it.

[ARIFULRONY]

2 LAN use different IP (one plug into a router and other into a switch)

[ARIFULRONY]

17 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

So why can you not connect both at the same time?

2 LAN use different IP (one plug into a router and other into a switch)

[TapfererToaster]

How is the network set up? Is the Switch also connected to router?

 

Also check your settings of the network cards and check if they are in a "fail-over" setting.

 

Generally, it is not a problem to run 2 network cards of the same PC. the best solution would be to connect the switch to your router and then connect both network cards to the switch. A setup like this could be useful if there is also a Fileserver with SMB3 and Multipath (that also has 2+ connections) on the switch.

 

To make it clear which card is used for internet, you could remove the gateway address from one of the cards - so only one card finds out of the network.