I would like to have 2 LAN ports on my computer, but not sure if this will work. Can I just add a PCI LAN card to give me another slot?? I want to plug in my NAS drive and have Internet, but both use Ethernet and I only have one Ethernet port!
I wasn't sure whether a second port would be recognised, or if I could just add another LAN port.
Advice would be appreciated!
Kit
Yes you can just add a second interface. It may get slightly complicated when you need to set up an IP address for your NAS. It will need to be static and on a separate range to your main network. If your main network gives IPs 192.168.0.* then you will have to give your NAS a static IP of something like 192.168.1.1 and your computers NAS interface something like 192.168.1.2.
I have no idea how to set a static IP on my NAS, I will have to look that up. I know my ISP doesn't provide static IPs, will that be a problem?
Shouldnt be a problem at all.
All you're doing is creating a second network, for your NAS.
Your first network, that connects to your ISP, shouldnt be effected.
Right, I'll see if I have a PCI slot spare tonight then. I've already got a graphics and sound card installed so I'm hoping I've got room! I'll let you know when I run into problems!
Just a thought though. If Icreate a second network, does that mean I can only connect to one or other network at any one time? So I couldn't access files on my NAS (from port 2) and be on the Internet at the same time (port 1)?
No. If you give the NAS a different IP range to your internal network then any data sent to the NAS IP goes to the NAS and other data goes to the internal network. If you find that you can't connect to the internet then try swapping the NAS and LAN cables over. It is possible the interface priority is wrong.
If your NAS has a web interface you can probably set up an IP from there.
This is called a multihomed setup, Google for multihomed. It is a standard configuration for firewalls and in systems where redundancy is needed.
Mark.
Hi there,
The router is upstairs, the NAS is downstairs, I don't have the ability to run an Ethernet cable through my house. I have a homeplug setup t oaccess the internet downstairs and it works fine, I just wanted to be able to plug in the homeplug and the NAS into the back of the computer at the same time.
Kit
Is there a reason you don't want to plug in the NAS upstairs into the router?
Main reason to use a NAS is for computers on your network to have access to the data without a computer hosting the data.
If you are just going to plug it into your pc, you should have just gone with a USB external.
Also, a lot of the cheaper NAS units have slow controllers which limit the data throughput, some transfer as slow as 10MB/s, which is quite slow when transferring many files or large files.
Usb2 gives me around 40-60MB/s.
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