i have two nics on one machine. which was installed windows server 2003 r2. i have allocated two ip for the nics for example. 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2the machines in the network can access it from the both ip. but i want to avoid the case that one nic is fully occupied for the network transfer. but another is idle. because i don't know when the user will choose which ip to access.is there a way to solve this issue? let the server automaticlly choose the nic?thanks in advance.

The best way is to use network teaming, so that all traffic uses the same IP address. Running a server with two IP addresses can cause some odd problems (especially if you use the computer browser service).Bill

Bill Grant said: The best way is to use network teaming, so that all traffic uses the same IP address. Running a server with two IP addresses can cause some odd problems (especially if you use the computer browser service).BillThanks for the reply Bill.I found there is few infomation about network teaming. I found one in the intel offcial web site. it seems only few nic support this technology. anyway, i will give a try.

Agree with Bill, Nic teaming is best solution.One Nic can accept packet on behalf of another NIC and pass it on to stack (W2K3 behavior). If NIC is 100 MBPS, it is very less chance it will be fully utilised any time. TCPIP buffer and windows data read/write are not as fast as NIC speed.FYI................Server 2008 comes with strong host model, which mean one NIC cannot accept packet on behalf of another NIC, although you can disable strong host model using netsh command.FYI................Nic teaming is not supported by all NIC, apart from that if we are using X86 machines we have limited kernal memory space and if we add NIC teaming software without using it, we might see performance issue on machine as it will block memory in kernal. Third party kernal drivers are reason for blue screen as well.Please do identify if you really need 2 NIC to handle traffic, if not, disable one NIC and use single NIC environment.Hope this helps.