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I was looking at the overview for MSI's new X99A motherboard and noticed that it came with two ethernet ports. I've only ever used motherboards with a single ethernet adapter so I am wondering how the two ports could be used.

Could two patch cables be plugged into the motherboard from two separate routers in order to double the system bandwidth?

Additionally, what would happen if two patch cables were plugged into the motherboard from a single switch box?

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Link aggregation is what you're looking for, or often called NIC Teaming. If you're running a server OS like Windows server or Linux, these often have the ability built in. Most desktop OS' however do not have such a feature built in.

Link aggregation would improve bandwidth, as you're theoretically going to get 2Gb to your switch instead of 1Gb.

Plugging them into seperate routers would simply join your computer to two networks at 1Gb and not offer any such bandwidth improvements, but would however allow your device to connect to whatever might be on that network.

If you were to plug them both into the same switch without configuring LACP, they would each get their own IP address and operate as independent interfaces and not really give you any bandwidth improvement.

This might help simplify it: https://youtu.be/s4y0jQTYWas

Typically LACP is used on servers or workstations that require a high-bandwith connection to another device like network shares with large files.

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    I'd add link aggregation is tricksy and needs some finassing. There's also the option of having two independant connections and having some flavour of load balancing. You may not need LACP, and intel's drivers support teaming with some ethernet cards on consumer OSes.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Jul 13, 2015 at 2:43
  • This is true! I'd forgotten that, but yes Intels drivers do support it for some desktop OSes. I do remember from my experience trying to figure it out for Windows 7 and 8 though I quickly broke down crying and gave up, that was not a fun experience. One of those networking configs that SHOULD work but never did....
    – Sean Missingham
    Jul 13, 2015 at 2:51
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    Oh I tried it but my second NIC was a realtek, and those are just horrible. I've been meaning to get a cheapie intel card to test but its been low priority
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Jul 13, 2015 at 3:25

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