Hey all,

Just on the spur of the moment as I'm watching my NICs download something via bittorrent, I'm noticing that they don't really easily share the network traffic. Sometimes they work together, and sometimes one takes it, then the other, like a relay race. My question is, it is possible to utilize both NICs at the same time?

I have a Linksys WMP54GS Wireless card (54 Mbps), the other is onboard powered by an nForce chipset (100Mbps). Both are connected to a router with an external WAP, which then goes to the internet. One guess here is that the speeds have something to do with the handing off, but I notice the nForce NIC doesn't take the traffic all the time, it kinda alternates.

Also I noticed an article on something similar to this on Microsoft's website, but it had to do with Win2k server, not Professional, which I have.

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

You read too much into blinking lights.

They don't "hand off" because one has one ip and the other has a different ip. You can't send on one ip and recieve on another.

There is a thing called adapter teaming. Not something you can do in your situation since you don't have a switch that supports it nor would your hardware [54/100]

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

Well it affects the bittorrent speeds. When the wifi one "takes over" the speeds slow down, and when the wired one "takes over", it speeds up.

There are problems with how switches and routers decide. Some rules have not been updated on some to reflect newer costs. Might be a QOS issue too.

Disable the wireless if you don't like it.

Using things like ethrereal and built in performance monitor one might get a clue as to what is going where. Even if a nic is fast by tcp rules it might consume a lot of cpu time because it doesn't offload from the cpu. Wireless encryption doesn't factor into path determination and slows links up.

As wanderer stated in a normal single download from a single source the two nics don't hand off. But in normal use there are many people that get more than a few tcp connections going. Torrents are so bad they have a tcp system file modified to open more connections.