-----Original Message-----
From: Riley Williams <rhw@MemAlpha.CX>
To: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>
Cc: Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu>
Date: Monday, February 14, 2000 9:29 AM
Subject: Re: Strange multi-interface workings
>Hi Jeff.
>
> > But thanks for clearing up a misconception -- that multiple NICs
> > on the same wire is really not useful.
>
>Oh, they have one very useful feature: Take a machine with multiple
>10baseT network interfaces that needs Linux installing over a network
>to it. The easiest way is simply to connect all of the network
>interfaces to the same BNC cable, then it doesnae matter which one
>gets used to download...
>
Sorry that I'm coming into the middle of this thread, so I don't know
everything, but I would argue that multiple NICs on the same wire/hub would
be moderately useful in a few cases:
o Traffic accounting
You have a box hosting two sites, put one on one NIC and one on the other,
wouldn't that make it easier to sort out who/what is doing traffic to where?
Yeah, I know, aliases.
o Redundancy
I had a kernel panic tied to the NIC card driver once upon a time. If I
would have had another NIC with different driver I coulda saved the trip to
reboot the box.
o Performance testing
On the grounds that transferring from one NIC to another in the same box
might be halfway useful, or throwing a LAN analyzer in there might help
debug stuff.
Then again, I am not a coder or hacker or major network guy, so I defer to
the judgement of the senior gurus.
JT
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