Dual NIC cards

[jimmy2975]

Hello,

I run F16, 64 bit at home. The PC has 2 NIC cards, NIC1 (Realtek, onboard) and NIC2 (Intel, PCI). The reason I got NIC 2 was because it turned out that the NIC1 was dropping connections quite erratically. I do not want to use NIC1 for internet or downlaods/uploads because NIC1 will not sustain a connection. However I also need WoL which the BIOS only supports the NIC1 (onboard). In the BIOS there is no way (or atleast I do not know how to ) enable WoL for the NIC2.

Both NIC1 and 2 are connected to the router. NIC1 is DHCP and NIC2 is static IP. I can send Wol packets to MAC address of NIC1 and use the static IP address of NIC2 if I need to connect to the home PC (for data transfers).

My question is which network am I using when I am browsing the internet or downloading stuff from the internet? Can I use NIC1 just for Wol (which I am since I am use this MAC address) and NIC2 for everything else (not sure of this....like internet browsing, uploads/downloads from this PC)?

Any insights/suggestions/comments is appreciated.

Thanks
Jimmy

[jpollard]

It depends on your default route...

Now granted, you haven't shown what your IP numbers are, and it is possible that both are on the same subnet (like 192.168.0.x). In that case it will depend on the source of the connection - outside connections through IP#1 will get responses from that interface.

Inside connections to outside should take the one with the lowest hop count/weighting (see route -ee for metrics). These are used by routing daemons. I believe the kernel will use whatever is first on the list.

[jimmy2975]

Thanks for your input.

Both NICs are on the same subnet like you guessed. One with static (192.168.1.10) set on the router with a MAC address which is of NIC2 (prefered one) and the other NIC1 has IP assigned by router at boot time (not static) like 192.168.1.x. Both are on default route 192.168.1.1 and DNS 192.168.1.1


sudo route -ee
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface MSS Window irtt
default Wireless_Broadb 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth2 0 0 0
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth2 0 0 0
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 0 0 0

[jimmy@Linuxhome ~]$ ip route list
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth2 proto static
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth2 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.14 metric 1
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.10 metric 1

Do I need to change the metric which is 1 for both? or something else? I honestly do not know how to proceed.

Thanks
Jimmy

---------- Post added at 05:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:53 AM ----------

While NIC1 still "cable connected" to the ruter but turned "off" on NM, WoL through NIC1 seems to work so far!!!

[jpollard]

It depends on what you want to do.

You should be able to just unplug the line you want, and the system will use the other.

You can also just do a ifconfig down eth0 and get the same result.