2 Ethernet ports in MoBo?

[Deleted member 209350]

I was looking at some x570 boards to potentially upgrade my current rig for the 3000 series, I noticed that some of the boards (MSI Meg Godlike for example) has 2 ethernet ports?

Whats the use case for this? I'm sure you can't just connect 2 ethernet cables into it and expect to get double the speed right?

If so whats the point in actually having 2, just wondering as I have no idea.

 

[Quartz]

A typical use case is connecting to two networks at once. For instance, you might have one port connected to a normal network and one connected to an IPMI network so that the IPMI devices are secure from hacking. Or, if the motherboard is used for clustering the second NIC can be used for the hearbeat network.

 

[Deleted member 209350]

A typical use case is connecting to two networks at once. For instance, you might have one port connected to a normal network and one connected to an IPMI network so that the IPMI devices are secure from hacking. Or, if the motherboard is used for clustering the second NIC can be used for the hearbeat network.

If you were to have 2 different networks in your house, its possible to get speed from both of them, essentially doubling it?

Also have no idea what a hearbeat is

 

[b00merang69]

It was common a few gens ago from NForce 2, one may have been 10/100 and the other 10/100/1000, but I had later Mobo's with 2x 10/100/1000 NIC's and I suppose you could have a home LAN on one and your ISP on other.

On the later Mobos I mentioned you could TEAM both the Intel NIC's together to get 2Gb/s.

 

[Quartz]

Also have no idea what a hearbeat is

Sorry. That should be heartbeat. Basically an are-you-alive / synchronisation network.

If you were to have 2 different networks in your house, its possible to get speed from both of them, essentially doubling it

You could get full speed from both of them separately, yes. For instance, imagine if one NIC were connected to one NAS and the other to another NAS you could read from both of them simultaneously at full speed.

 

[Jimmy Weirdarms]

You can use them to bridge networks too, if you want to create a separate network with the PC as a router, or to intercept and watch traffic going between machines on one side and the internet or whatever.

 

[Avalon]

Virtual environments, teaming/combine them with a managed switch etc. I have boxes with 6 gigabit ports (4 on a single PCIe card, 2 onboard), but it depends on what you actually use the board for. Sometimes it’s beneficial to pass a physical port to a VM, most times a virtual interface works well enough or even better depending on the scenario.