Configuring Two Nics

[Rastar]

Hey all, finally got my machine back up and running. :P

Here is what I would like to do and what I have to do it with.

I have two NICs plugged into my Linksys BEFSR41 router.
Each of these NICs has a static ip assigned 192.168.1.XXX

I would like to only allow incoming data on a specific NIC. Say I want it to allow ports 2000-6000 on 192.168.1.100 along with 8080 and all the other ports for email, ntp etc.

The other NIC I would like to have available for when I want to use the web, ping or traceroute stuff.

How do I set this up and can it actually do this?

My goal is to while still sharing the same bandwidth (Cable) to have the appearance of being faster for when I use it. Also allowing me access without having to wait for an open slot on the other NIC.

Am I smoking the wrong pipe again?

Ras

[Rastar]

I must have asked the dumbest question


* BUMP *

[ph34r]

Wrong pipe. Use 1 nic to connect to cable, one for internal network, and share via a firewall/NAT/Masq setup (I use gShield muse.linuxmafia.org).

[Compunuts]

[quote author=Rastar link=board=4;threadid=6516;start=0#61343 date=1046886438]
I would like to only allow incoming data on a specific NIC. Say I want it to allow ports 2000-6000 on 192.168.1.100 along with 8080 and all the other ports for email, ntp etc.
[/quote]
A firewall can do this job easily.

The other NIC I would like to have available for when I want to use the web, ping or traceroute stuff.

How do I set this up and can it actually do this?

I don't think you will be able to specify which program use which NIC. It has to be set by default gateway and it's all or nothing. BUT if you firewall off the first NIC from Internal, then you will have specific stuff using the first NIC and the rest will go to the second NIC if you have both gateways set up.

My goal is to while still sharing the same bandwidth (Cable) to have the appearance of being faster for when I use it. Also allowing me access without having to wait for an open slot on the other NIC.

I don't think it's the case. There is no need for a NIC to wait for the open slot. The speed of processing of a NIC is much more faster than the speed of your Cable modem or the bandwidth. Since many NICs can handle at least 10 MB/s while many can do 100MB or even 1GB while your Cable bandwidth is only 1.5 MB max. Even if you have two NICs, your ability and bottleneck is at your Cable bandwidth than at your NIC's.

Am I smoking the wrong pipe again?

You are reaching for the wrong pipe. :P

[tolstoy]

I don't think you are going to be able to achieve what you want by load balancing between two nics. No matter what you do, you are still going to be limited to the total bandwidth of your connection. I have seen some commercial firewalls provide load balancing, but it was across seperate WAN links.

[vvx]

You don't want to use two nics. You want to use QoS! You can limit how much bandwidth to use for what, give different bandwidth different priorities, etc, etc.. Sounds like you want to run a server but not have it overrun everything? Just lower that traffic's priority. It can get quite complex, all that you can do. There is a howto at lartc.org