Fun with a network...

[Fubarian]

Last night I got my 2 HDs back from my good buddy Maxtor - slapped 'em in my ole 200mmx, formatted 'em and set 'em up as my file server.

Since I set the 2 HDs (13gig and a 6.4) on a controller, I figured it'd be a 1/2 decent speed on a 2.5gig transfer across my network...weeeellll, it was going snot slow so I got creative...you'll love this next part...

Being 1/2 a$@ed-ly logical, more bandwidth = more speed = faster transfers...right? wellll...since I'm on a switch...I though..hhhmmmm what if I put 2 or 3 NICs in the thing....here's where things get interesting

I installed a 3com ISA 10/100, a Linksys 10/100 and a netgear 310 was already in there so I didn't mess with it. Booted it - thinking it would complain about "I found another computer with the same name blah blah blah" but it didn't...so let the transfer begin!

2.5 gig to the 13 and 4 gig to the 6.4 - low and behold, ALL 3 were blinking at the same time!!

Now, how well they were working together, no idea, why it even worked...again, no idea...but it was a good bit faster.

Have any of you guys tried anything like this??

[Milenko]

That shouldn't be possible. Your switch should be cutting off two of the three cards, otherwise you end up with some nasty looping and other strange things going on.

Why you didn't get errors? I haven't the slightest idea. I've tried it b4 just for sh#ts and giggles and I got the old "you computer name yadda yadda yadda..."

[sprkymrk]

I don't have my information right in front of me, but I think what you did is possible in some circumstances. Multiple nics in a single computer is nothing new. Depending on the OS you can create routers and other multi-homed machines this way. There is such a thing as teaming nics, and you can assign multiple ip's to the same computer for load balancing. If you are running WINS on your network then it's possible to resolve the same computer name to multiple ip's which would then cause the switch to use multiple channels.
That's just off the top of my head, someone else can correct me if I'm wrong. If I find out something else I'll post back.