[MM-o4]

Hi guys
I did do a search for this but didn't really find what I was after.
At work we have a G5 xserve but we are only using one ethernet port. It has two, and I was wondering would it work/better if the second ethernet port was plugged in, even if it goes into the same network hub?
Will the xserve having the two plugged in treat the two as one big one? Does this give the xserve two IP's or some other techy bit of tweaking to get it working?

Thanks

MM-o4

[MM-o4]

Really, no one here can tell me if I can use the second port?
I mean no disrespect to any here but this is the first question I have asked since the start of 2001 that could not be answered in these forums. wow

MM-o4

[ghporter]

MM,

I won't say that your question "can't be answered," but it's quite possible that it is beyond either the experience or interest () of many of the folks that browse the offerings here.

Each ethernet port will have its own IP address. There may be software that allows the machine to treat both ports as one big one, but if it exists, I don't know of it. While there are obvious benefits from having the ability to download data from two different sources, unless you're using special software to do special stuff, you really won't be able to make prctical use of it.

The machine won't work "better" with a second port in use. It will be able to share an Internet connection very easily by connecting eth0 to your Internet connection, another computer to the eth1 port, and enabling Internet sharing.

You should understand that typically a port gets its address in one of two ways. Either the machine's admin (that's you) manually assigns it, or it requests one from a DHCP server. In the case of Internet sharing, you'd probably connect eth0 to the broadband modem and let the modem assign that address, then assign eth1 an address manually to serve as a router for the other computer you connect there.

[MM-o4]

Thanks ghporter. That answered all my questions
Macnn is back to it's 100% batting average


MM-o4

[adamberti]

Just thought I would let you know how we use our 2 ports...

All our office computers when connecting to our server go through one (as it is one IP) and all outside network traffic to our website / ssh go through the other one (the other IP). Now I don't really know if this gives a performance boost, but it seems like it could. That way we're dividing up our network traffic.

So one option may be to split up your server applications to be accessed on different addresses.

[C.J. Moof]

10.4 supports link aggregation- basically ethernet interface bonding, so multiple interfaces appear as one.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/

[leira]

Originally Posted by C.J. Moof

10.4 supports link aggregation- basically ethernet interface bonding, so multiple interfaces appear as one.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/

as far as i know, you will still need a switch/router/whatever that supports channel bonding, and the olny real gains i can think of would be for local network use. most broadband connections are so much slower than a single NIC you cold put many connections into your (bonded) router, and still not fill up a single card. for now the best use i could see for link aggregation would be a backup situation where the primary NIC fails and the second picks up the slack. ( not exactly for average consumer use IMO)

[C.J. Moof]

Wouldn't it be a better local file server that way? Say you have 2 designers on G5's, both reading files from the Xserve. If they both ask for a big file at the same time, they'll both get half the thoroughput when there's one connection between Xserve and switch. If there are 2 bonded, they should both get full speed.

That's my understanding of it, at least.

[leira]

dont most versioning systems disallow two people from working on the same file at the same time?

[ghporter]

C.J., if your LAN is based on a good switch, and unless you're really saturating the network, both of the theoretical designers will feel that they're getting the full LAN bandwidth. While designer 1 is receiving data packets, designer 2 can be sending ACKs for what he's received. The only time you'd notice a drop in performance is when using something like HDTV streaming on a 100BaseT network, with several clients streaming the same thing at once. Simply loading files back and forth is usually so fast, even with pretty large files, that you don't see multiple clients loading down the network.

YMMV based on your LAN equipment, cable quality and other variables I can't predict, but in general this is how things are supposed to work.