Two MOBO NIC's worth it?

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Two MOBO NIC's worth it?

Yorkshirekid

193 posts

Master Geek

#270099 23-Apr-2020 11:34

I have fibre to the door and CAT 6 throughout the house. I have an ailing NAS / PC. I'm thinking of getting a new PC with dual NIC's. One port would go from PC to the (yet to buy, new NAS, which would also have dual NIC's). The NAS acts mainly as my media server but I also have files backed up to it as it acts as a cloud server too. I don't use that feature often though. Out of the NAS would be a direct CAT 6 connection to the smart TV. The other NIC from the PC would go direct to the router. Out of the router I would connect to the fibre network and a GB switch. The switch would host the printer, second PC and a Rucus 310. I'm thinking I would have better throughput from the NAS especially as the specs for the NAS would be improved. Would this basic thinking be correct, without going into the hardware specs of the NAS and PC.

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#2468513 23-Apr-2020 11:43

Hi, you sound like you are complicating things, without really achieving much. So what speeds are you streaming from your TV to the NAS, most TV's only have 100Mb/s NICs as they simply dont require it, so will a direct connection rather than a single switched connection between your NAS and TV achieve anything?

And I presume you were going to sort some routing out via the NAS so the TV can access the internet?

If you really want to make use of the dual NICs on the NAS, get a switch that supports link aggregation, and aggregate the two nics to the switch, this will still only allow 1GB/s between the NAS and any other end point, but now potentially two end points can achieve Gig links simulatneously.

Cyril

Yorkshirekid

193 posts

Master Geek

#2468548 23-Apr-2020 12:27

Ok thank you. My question was really about the benefit of 2 NIC's on a MOBO. But, you have taught me something here - aggregation - I have not heard of that before. So, I'm going to go away and read for a few hours to school up. Thank you for that.

Jase2985

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#2468851 23-Apr-2020 19:05

connect everything back to the switch, both ports of the nas, each computer and the TV etc. that is the most logical way to do it.

Yorkshirekid

193 posts

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#2469118 24-Apr-2020 11:35

Thanks - atm I have it configured that way, except I'm just using the one port on the nas. If I use the second nas port and connect to my switch, [1] will it break anything and [2] what difference should I see and [3] do I have to configure anything on the nas

cyril7

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#2469162 24-Apr-2020 12:27

Hi, if you connect both ports of your NAS (what brand were you intending using by the way) to an unmanaged switch you will not cause any issues, but if the nic is in DHCP mode it will pick up an address just like the first nic, you will now have two interfaces to your NAS, but they cannot be used automagically in aggregation, this requires the NAS and a managed switch.

Cyril

Yorkshirekid

193 posts

Master Geek

#2470484 24-Apr-2020 18:24

QNAP TS-410 with an unmanaged switch. One of the reasons I'm asking all this is 'cos I intend to upgrade everything - NAS, switches and PC. I'm now a bit more schooled up on the NAS / switch situation, thank you. Can someone please tell me if having two NIC's on a mobo would still be a good idea?

Jase2985

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#2470537 24-Apr-2020 19:55

Yorkshirekid:

QNAP TS-410 with an unmanaged switch. One of the reasons I'm asking all this is 'cos I intend to upgrade everything - NAS, switches and PC. I'm now a bit more schooled up on the NAS / switch situation, thank you. Can someone please tell me if having two NIC's on a mobo would still be a good idea?

Honestly no

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Mehrts

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#2470547 24-Apr-2020 20:43

For now, just use one gigabit NIC.

If you're often saturating the gigabit connection in the future, then that would be the point to look at other options (Link aggregation/10Gbps etc).

You might be surprised how little throughput your devices consume when in normal operation. The only time I could think of wanting a faster connection, would be when transferring an entire drive's/multiple drives worth of data between one unit to another, but that would be once in a blue moon.

Jase2985

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#2470585 24-Apr-2020 22:07

only real reason i can see for 2 network ports is if your using the PC as your router (PFsense etc), one for WAN and the other for LAN. otherwise no tangible benefits

Yorkshirekid

193 posts

Master Geek

#2471251 25-Apr-2020 18:45

Thank you all.

This is a great place to come to get friendly, insighful advice. I've learnt quite a bit in the last few days.

Cheers

Tinkerisk

4235 posts

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#2471307 25-Apr-2020 21:05

Jase2985:

only real reason i can see for 2 network ports is if your using the PC as your router (PFsense etc), one for WAN and the other for LAN. otherwise no tangible benefits

There are a lot (most for virtual machines, separated management network, i.e.), but this would be another story for the TO.

- NET: FTTH, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs, ipPBX
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

K8Toledo

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#2471342 26-Apr-2020 00:47

Throughput is only as fast as the NAS drives, you'd need something like SSD RAID to take advantage of one 1x GigE (or data cached in RAM).

Also bandwidth factors more in sequential performance not so much random access.

On a side note, last week I plugged a 12v adapter into an external USB hub connected to my Sabertooth 990FX. Ethernet port gone both AsMedia USB 3.1 controllers gone all USB 2.0 ports gone.

what do to...

fe31nz

1233 posts

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#2471775 26-Apr-2020 22:36

K8Toledo:

Throughput is only as fast as the NAS drives, you'd need something like SSD RAID to take advantage of one 1x GigE (or data cached in RAM).

Also bandwidth factors more in sequential performance not so much random access.

That used to be the case, but these days there are plenty of spinning rust drives that are faster than gigabit Ethernet. 1 Gbit/s = 125 Mbytes/s - actual speed will be less due to the protocol overheads. Take a look at this for an example of a fast modern enterprise class drive:

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSE90160/Seagate-35-16TB-Enterprise-Capacity-Exos-SATA-6Gbs

Note the maximum sustained transfer rate of 269 Mbytes/s. I have a slightly older ST14000NM0018 model and two ST12000NM0007's and yes, they really are that fast. And in a speed oriented RAID setup with multiple drives, even older drives will work faster than 1 Gbit/s. I would love to have a 10 Gbit/s network - it is a pain moving huge video files between these drives over just 1 Gbit/s.

Jase2985

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#2471797 27-Apr-2020 08:23

K8Toledo:

Throughput is only as fast as the NAS drives, you'd need something like SSD RAID to take advantage of one 1x GigE (or data cached in RAM).

Also bandwidth factors more in sequential performance not so much random access.

yeah na, a standard sata 6gb drive will sit at 200-300MB/s sustained writes, which is faster than the 125MB/s that Gigabit Ethernet allows

PANiCnz

990 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2471807 27-Apr-2020 08:45

Also, irrespective of whether harddrives can saturate more than a 1gbe connection, its worth understanding how port aggregation works and why it wont offer the equivalent of a 2gbe connection. SMB 3 multichannel might be an option, but its a bit finicky and your NAS might not support it.

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