Networking theory

[AJTerminator]

I have 2 computers and 1 router and want to get 1GBit/s between the 2 computers, but my router is only 100Mb, so I thought, Could I just connect the 2 PCs to the router with the onboard, 100Mb Ethernet port and have a cheap 1Gbit PCIe card and have an Ethernet cable connecting the two. Would this work? (Just as an alternative to buying a 1Gbit Switch/Router)

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

The best way to do this is to just get a switch. OR a router with 1gbe, that router must be pretty old.

 

But you can do that.

[Guest]

Yeah that's kinda plausable. I think that's called a peer to peer network. Would be really fast for local network operations. 

Might be smarter to just get a "caching" server though if you want to use the internet. 

[Windows7ge]

A ring topology? Yes it can work though there are better alternatives. The only issue I think you might have with this is what interface the OS deems fastest. You might have to play with the metric of the interface which should manually tell the system the preferred path for network communications between the machines. 

[AJTerminator]

Cheers for the fast response, but still, there must be a relatively easy way to do it, would having a dual port ethernet card help? 1 for the other PC and one for the router? Also, yes, it's old lol

[Guest]

You mean just connecting those two PC's together? 

Yes, but it's not that simple. First, if those are old PC's, a crossover Ethernet cable is needed. Second, you need to configure static ip's, since there are not DHCP server and third, how would you use this 1Gbps link? Some applications can be unsupported for that or need to be configured (just though about game streaming)

 

Just for testing, you could try that by just connecting them, disconnecting the cables on the router, you don't need internet for a local transfers I suppose, right?

[AJTerminator]

I was thinking of doing that, but if it requires that much hassle, I'd rather just stay at 100Mb/s, all it is is just a backup, so... yeah. Doesn't matter

[Alex Atkin UK]

As mentioned, the easiest way is to get a Gigabit switch, plug a single ethernet cable from your router into the Gigabit switch, plug the PCs into the Gigabit switch.

 

As also pointed out, it might be worth considering just replacing the router with one that already has a Gigabit switch built into it.  It may slightly improve your broadband performance.

[AJTerminator]

I know, but paying £25 for a gigabit switch + £10 for 2 gigabit NICs = £35. A lot for just a random backup server to have faster connectivity, so yeah. It's alright, but thank you for the reply