2 LAN ports?

[wittykitty]

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

 

[cgimusic]

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.

 

[wittykitty]

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?

 

[xarden]

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.

 

[wittykitty]

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)?

 

[cgimusic]

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.

 

[Zepher]

If you can, just get a router and plug your computer, NAS, and modem into it.

 

[CaptainSlog]

This is called a multihomed setup, Google for multihomed. It is a standard configuration for firewalls and in systems where redundancy is needed.

Mark.

 

[wittykitty]

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

 

[Zepher]

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.

 

[chev65]

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

Just get a short Ethernet cable and plug that into one of the Ethernet ports on the router and plug the NAS into that cable. The NAS will be upstairs with the router which shouldn't matter because you can access the NAS from your machine downstairs. You don't need to set up two networks or a secondary NIC for this to work.

 

[wittykitty]

Hi there,

This isn't a cheaper NAS - it's a Synology Diskstation 1511+

I did have it plugged in upstairs, but the homeplugs started to struggle with the data transfer. What do you mean about a USB?

Kit

 

[Zepher]

Well, that Synology is an impressive NAS.
The easiest way to get the system up and running and getting max speed (assuming your current Ethernet port is gigabit, aka 1000mbps), is to just purchase a gigabit switch.
You will plug your NAS, pc, and the home plug into the switch and you will be good to go.
This will also allow easy access of other pc's you have on your network to access your NAS without having to configure your pc to share and having it on it on for access.

If your current Ethernet port isn't gigabit, then you will need to buy a gigabit pci or pci-e card to get max speed.

100mbps Ethernet has a max transfer of 12 megabytes per second.
1000mbps has a max of 125 megabytes per second.

 

[UsernameIssues]

I'm not suggesting a solution as much as I'm hoping to clarify some things for you and consolidate some things into one post so that those offering solutions might take note of your comments about homeplugs. (And homeplugs can have crappy throughput.)

For the purposes of this post, a modem is one of the first pieces of networking equipment that data coming from the internet passes thru in your home. A router is probably the next piece of equipment in the path. The circuitry that functions as the modem and the circuitry that functions as the router can be in the same box... it can appear as one device on your home's network.

....I know my ISP doesn't provide static IPs, will that be a problem?

Network traffic involving the internet is on what I'll later refer to as network #1. There are no static IP assignments needed for network#1.

I'm going to guess that your modem is getting one "internet facing" (dynamically assigned) IP address from your ISP and that the router has its Network Address Translation (NAT) function turned on.

That NAT function takes that one ISP assigned IP address and splits it in a way that lets all of the devices on your home network connect to the internet (if need be). Or, to illustrate with made up numbers: let's say that your ISP assigned 183.218.23.85 to the modem - then the router assigns an IP address of 192.168.0.100 to one of your computers and 192.168.0.101 to another device on your network. The router keeps track of which device inside your home has asked to send/receive data to/from the internet. It routes the data to the correct device.

....The router is upstairs, the NAS is downstairs,....

One of the suggestions was to plug the NAS directly into your router, but then you mentioned that the homeplug Ethernet adapters have a bit of a struggle with that much data going thru them... so the data slows down when it hits the homeplug that is connected to a computer. :-(
Hence your desire to connect the NAS directly to one computer without having a homeplug anywhere in the path.

So... if you continue with that plan - then
Computer #1 will have two network adapters installed:
One adapter that talks to network #1 in your home...
...& a 2nd adapter that talks to network #2 in your home.

Network #1 includes:
...one or more computers/homeplugs
...your router/modem/internet traffic
Network #2 will consist of only:
...one computer#1/PCI network adapter
...one NAS

When computer #1 wants to talk to the internet - that should work just fine. If it does not, then there are some things to try. When computer #1 wants to talk to the NAS - that too should work once you manually assign an IP to the PCI network adpater inside of computer #1 and manually assign an IP to the NAS

I'll assume that there is a computer #2 as part of your home network. I'll also assume that you want computer #2 to be able to access data from the NAS. Correct? That might take some more adjustments to computer #1 to get it to serve up files from the NAS to the other computer(s) or devcies on your network.

In your current network setup, data traffic going from the NAS to computer #2 will travel thru two homeplugs:
NAS > homeplug > homeplug > computer #2

In your proposed network setup, data traffic going from the NAS to computer #2 will still travel thru two homeplugs:
NAS > PCI NIC > homeplug > homeplug > computer #2

One thing gained by your proposed network setup is better data throughput between NAS and computer #1.

I hope that this post helps others to help you...

 

[miket82]

NAS and Lan

Not sure where you are but Search Results - Memorybits.co.uk has a 5 port switch at £12. Plug your single cable PC into this and you have another 4 ethernet ports to play with.

 

[3D Jed]

I agree with the Gigabit switch solution. Most routers are 100Mbit and can be a bottleneck when used to connect a home network. My system

www - 100Mbit router - 8 port 1000Mbit switch - everything else goes here (NAS, all the pcs etc)

and I get 900+ Mbit transfers between boxes.

 

[miket82]

Ethernet switches

Gigabyte switches are faster than standard but at £12 who's counting?
The caveat is that to use Gigabyte you need cat 6 cables everywhere plus everything else must be be Gigabyte able otherwise like a ships convoy everything goes at the speed of the slowest.
My system has a small 3 PC network in my shed, some 150 feet from the router, served by Powerplugs over an armored cable. The shed system goes through another switch as its cheaper to run a few machines via it than more Powerplugs. No idea what the speed is but have yet to notice a service problem in terms of data delivery.
I have a server next to the NAS plus another wired PC (50ft away) and wireless network for laptops etc.
I have 10 separate Mysql web sites loaded on my Zyxel NAS (next to the router) all using Innodb transactional data I/O and I test from the shed to check response times.
Sounds a bit of a lash up but the important thing is 'IT WORKS'.
Gigabyte would be lovely but apart from the router I would have to replace all the cards, ethernet cables etc. etc.
But, I don't play games (ever), do not download films or video and do not stream so horses for courses.

 

[Zepher]

Cat5e is all you need for normal runs under 300feet . Even cat5 works, but I would keep runs under 50 feet.
Our home network consists of the following,
2 Gigabit routers, 3 gigabit switches, 1 10/100 switch, 6 pc's, 1 net book, 1 laptop, 2 Internet tv's, 2 Xbox 360's, wdtv live hub, wdtv live plus, Sprint Airave Fem2cell, 2 iPads, 2 touchpads, bluray player, and 3 smartphones.
All wired devices are using cat5e.

 

[3D Jed]

Miket82 - re Gigabit would be lovely.

Since my internet is 60Mbit I just use the 100Mbit BT HomeHub to connect to the www. Everything this side of the router is on a £20 8 port Gigabit switch. I still use my old Cat5e cables with no drop in speed. So internet is 60Mbit but my pcs + NAS talk to each other at 1000Mbit.

I need my side of the router to be fast because I render 3D movies over all the machines overnight (Cinema 4D Net Render) and there's a lot of data involved. Also file backup to NAS is 10X faster than regular router connected speed.

Re - apart from the router I would have to replace all the cards etc, like I said the router stays the same and has no impact on the local network. Also most modern motherboards are gigabit lan so no new cards needed.

Re - I dont download movies - network speed and download speed are 2 different things (although pulling a movie off my NAS only takes about 5 seconds).

When 10/100/1000 lan first appeared, I thought someone, somewhere was connecting to the internet at that speed.

D'OH me as the saying goes . . .

 

[wittykitty]

Oh wow! So many responses!

My current router is gigabit, so I can use a gigabit switch. However, doesn't the gigabit switch need to be plugged into the router?