MOBO with dual NIC, can I make use of both this way:

I'd like one network adapter to prioritize traffic on my LAN. I would like the other one for traffic coming to and from outside my LAN. I tried to download and use Realtek's ethernet diagnostic utility, it didn't work or I dont understand how to use it.

Here is the router I'm using:
http://kb.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/12167

Motherboard:
http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=3316

Would teaming be easier?

I have a homegroup via this router also.

Would teaming be easier?

Click to expand...

Note on page 87 of your manual it says,

Teaming functionality enabled allows two single connections to act as one single connection for twice the transmission bandwidth

Click to expand...

That's to "supposedly" get faster networking speeds. It will speed up your access but it is not X2. But that's not what you are asking for.

You are trying to connect your motherboard to two networks, your LAN (everything on your side of the router) and the Internet. If you are connecting both network connections to the same router, then you are connecting both connections to the same network. Again, not what you want.

The simplest way to isolate the two networks is to connect your LAN1 connector directly to your Internet gateway device (cable/DSL modem) and the LAN2 connector to your router along with the other computers on your network. But then the other computers don't have Internet access (unless you open up Internet sharing on your computer). Probably not what you want either. And I think configuring all the firewalls would be fuel for a migraine - and clumps of lost hair.

So that means you need two routers. Router 1 connects to the gateway device for Internet access. LAN1 connection on your computer connects to Router 1. LAN2 connection on your computer, and the other computers connect to Router 2. Router 2 connects to Router 1. Still a firewall mess if you want to do some file and folder sharing, but less difficult to manage.

Not sure that's what you want but that's how you do it.

Thanks for the lengthy explanation. I decided to get a gig switch and plug it into my switch/router. The issue I was originally experiencing was slow internet speeds while I was using synctoy to backup folders between computers. The bandwidth limitations of a 100mb/s connection were really getting to me.

Well, a switch does not isolate the two networks, but does put all the other computers to one port of the router. So if that meets your needs, great! Thanks for the followup.

I had something like this and it was a royal pain-in-the-ass to setup. It didn't help that the routers where crappy and featureless compared to higher-end routers.

Two servers where connected directly to modem kinda bad... should have a firewall but its a cheap solution (dns, web, exchange). Have a wireless router which goes into the second nic slots of these servers creating my wireless LAN. I changed the second router gateway to 10.0.1.1 and kept the primary set as 10.0.0.1. The dns for all nic's use my domain controller to resolve internet traffic. I did not set a default gateway for the LAN nic.

This way I could access the servers through the LAN but when the servers had work to do they took the fastest connection possible bypassing the crappy router altogether prioirtizing my WAN connection.

Nick