2 small networking questions

danari · 29-08-2003 11:12am #1

on both my computers i have 100 meg onboard nics . if i was to add another network card to each could i improve speeds between them for transfering large files ??? if so how can i set this up ?

also i want to set up a firewall on the gateway pc what should i use ? its going to be on a win 2k computer ? ive heard about black ice firewall and a few others but what is the best one for somone starting out and easy enough to use ?

napalm@night · 29-08-2003 11:27am

zone alarm is da business...:) Dont think you can run the hole two network card thing as one because they would both have different address etc etc...

the_syco · 29-08-2003 11:40am

SOME ISPs DON'T ALLOW CERTAIN FIREWALLs

Such as Eircom's DSL doesn't allow Blackice Defender.

If you check out PC World, they were doing a sale of Norton Antivirus, and Norton Firewall for about 60 yoyo's

tribble · 29-08-2003 11:48am

SOME ISPs DON'T ALLOW CERTAIN FIREWALLs

Don't allow from a technical or legal standpoint?
Because short of user inability I can't see any technical reason for it not working, presumably you just have to grant the necessary programs access to their necessary ports...
Indeed if you are using a router you already have a NAT firewall in place.

tribble

B0rG · 29-08-2003 12:30pm

I'm afraid adding 2nd set of nics to both pcs wont increase the network productivity. One thing I'll be sure of is that you'll spend a lot of time setting up routing between 2 comps.

If speed is that important you can go for 1gig network cards, but they are a bit expensive.

USB network may also be an option (if both computers are advanced enough), but I've only seen integrated support for it in Win 2003 server.

Capt'n Midnight · 29-08-2003 1:20pm

the only other way is to start messing around with load balacing / reg hacks.

since the cards are full duplex - setting up routes with traffic flowing in one direction between each card is not going to help.

You could setup one pair of cards on TCPIP and the other on netbeui and use IP addresses for on connection and names for the other - but you'd have to set NetBEUI as defult and it has a huge overhead and you would have to organise the traffic each way your self...

all in all not worth the hassle - prob best to figure ways of tweaking exisiting link or cutting down on unnesessary bandwidth - eg: some sort of cache ??

Frank Grimes · 29-08-2003 1:46pm

Originally posted by the_syco
Such as Eircom's DSL doesn't allow Blackice Defender.

That's not true, firstly they've no way of knowing what you've installed on your pc.
If you saw something on their site about Black Ice, I think the only reason it's there is because it conflicts with that Enternet software, apparently.

quozl · 29-08-2003 1:51pm

in linux or *bsd you can bind both network cards in a pc together to form one logical device and transfer at twice the speed. So I'd assume there's some way to do it in windows, maybe some specific manufacturers drivers support it?

But is the hard disk of the pc you're writing to going to be fast enough to keep up with 200mbit/s anyway? I know the hard drive of the machine i'm posting this from couldnt even read at that speed and it's udma2

Greg

iano · 31-08-2003 5:37pm

Originally posted by the_syco:
Such as Eircom's DSL doesn't allow Blackice Defender.

This doesn't sound right at all.

Eircom (or any other ISP for that matter) should be delighted that its Users are educated enough to deploy good virus protection, firewalls and intrusion detection.

Some of these products need a bit of knowledge to correctly install and configure so maybe they don't want to spend ages on the telephone resolving configuration errors or software conflicts.

As for high-speed file transfer between PCs, I would be surprised if you are currently transferring at 100Mbit/s between your PCs. The throughput is usually limited by the PCs (Bus, Disk etc.) and NICs rather than the line speed. If you have very high-end hardware, then you could go for Gigabit Ethernet cards but you should probably look elsewhere for improvements first.

Señor Juárez · 31-08-2003 5:43pm

to be honest, is more than 100mbit REALLY necessary these days? sure you may have to wait a few extra seconds as you drag over all of those DVD Ripped DivX's on ur machine...but gigabit is just overkill in most applications so far

the_syco · 01-09-2003 7:52am

Originally posted by Frank_Grimes
That's not true, firstly they've no way of knowing what you've installed on your pc.
If you saw something on their site about Black Ice, I think the only reason it's there is because it conflicts with that Enternet software, apparently.

When you install their package, there's a readme listing 5 programs that don't work with the DSL package. Black Ice was one of them.
Also, the Enternet is wot you use to connect to the net, so anyhowz.
But, as routers are only 70 or so yoyo's, they'd be a better bet.

Thankfully, I've Norton. Why? 'Cos Norton logged a failed Sub7/Trojan attack from some London PC.

Frank Grimes · 01-09-2003 7:55am

Originally posted by the_syco
When you install their package, there's a readme listing 5 programs that don't work with the DSL package. Black Ice was one of them.

That's more or less what I said.

Also, the Enternet is wot you use to connect to the net, so anyhowz.

I know, what's your point?

Thankfully, I've Norton. Why? 'Cos Norton logged a failed Sub7/Trojan attack from some London PC

If your PC isn't infected with the trojan you've nothing to worry about.

Zaphod B · 01-09-2003 2:30pm

ZoneAlarm apparently doesn't like you sharing your internet connection on a network. Of course I didn't find out until too late and now I can't get the network to work again, but according to the documentation ZoneAlarm Pro WILL let you share the connection, but bog-standard ZoneAlarm won't.

Señor Juárez · 02-09-2003 7:56pm

hmm, why not just spend a lickle bit of money and get a small router with a hardware firewall? far simpler than all this software rubbish

De Rebel · 03-09-2003 6:03pm

Originally posted by marclar
hmm, why not just spend a lickle bit of money and get a small router with a hardware firewall? far simpler than all this software rubbish

Or do both, router firewall + software firewall. I use CA's personal fierwall , US40, or US50 if bundled with their personal AV. Have no problems with it conflicting with anything. And its nice to know that there is a double ditch between me and the big bad world.

ZENER · 03-09-2003 6:16pm

Sounds luverly but it requires special cables and tools to make them - your ordinary CAT5E cables wont cut the mustard !

What about buying 2 cheap firewire cards and firewire hub and set up a network with these. You get a really cool 400Mbps network.

Windows XP will offer a Firewire Ethernet device when it's installed, just treat it as a nic where configuration is concerned. I've done this between a Notebook and a Desktop and it works perfectly.

Your existing nic can do the internet connection to your router.

Just a thought !!

Tinky

De Rebel · 03-09-2003 6:24pm

Originally posted by danari
on both my computers i have 100 meg onboard nics . if i was to add another network card to each could i improve speeds between them for transfering large files ??? if so how can i set this up ?

Getting this to work with standard network cards will either be a nightmare or impossible. If you have high end cards, e.g. Intel PRO, they will come with an additional set of drivers/software which allow "teaming" which will do what you want. (you may need a switch to achieve this) But 4 of those babies will set you back. If you need the speed, a Cheaper/Better way would be either the Firewire or Gigabit solutions proposed above.

2 small networking questions

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