I'm new to nic teaming- thus forgive basic questions. Server is windows 2003 server, acting as basic file/print server on network. the server has nic #1 with ip 192.168.1.3- this is the nic that's been in use.the other nic has been disabled. the two nics are intel pro100VT and intel pro 1000 CT. My two questions- if I bridge these two nics, will I gain thruput, even though they're different models? Secondly,since everything on the network is looking for the server at 192.168.1.3, can I set the new bridged virtual nic to that ip and expect things to work as before(provided I also change the current 192.168.1.3 nic to another static ip)? I already tried temporarily creating the bridge so I know the capability is there, but I then deleted it since I was unsure how to configure it correctly. In the interest of complete reporting, this is an NT network, not active directory (don't ask...) That issue will be fixed soon with a new server, but I'd like to try teaming now if it will help thruput.

My advice is stick with one IP on the gigabit NIC and the other disabled.Bill

Virtual Teaming has been around for several years and I have had experience mainly with HP Teaming, but have set up a few servers using the Intel NICs. Teaming works fairly well, but you will need to configure according to what you expect the NICs to do. Generally, you can set up the Team to either Load Balance or provide Failover. In a Load Balance scenario, both NICs may be used to send data or receive data, or both (again depends on the vendor and config), or you can set it up as a Primary/Backup scenario where only one NIC is actually used, but if the NIC and/or the link fails, the software will automatically fail it over to the backup.Yes, you can assign the virtual adapter the same IP address you are using. The only thing that will change is that the virtual adapter will use a different MAC address which should not be a problem because the network equipement (switch) that the server is plugged into, will just learn the new MAC. However, depending on the software, you can change the MAC if you need to.My recommendation:Continue with your testing and learning, however, from my experience, these additional complexities in the design may not always provide additional benefit. In other words, you may not configure it correctly, or the virtual software may crash and impact your services. Over a period of 10 years, I think that there was only one occurrence that I can think of where I was glad that I had the NICs teamed.We no longer Team NICs based on the fact that there hasnt been a substantial gain compared to the cost of using two switch ports. Depending on the switching infrastructure, that could be costly when you host over a thousand servers.In my experience, NICs and cables (links) rarely fail.So to fully answer your question, it all depends, you need to look at the documentation for the Teaming software. Visit my blog: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Ok, thanks for the responses.I guess I will just use the faster of the two nics and not try to overcomlicate things.

i want to strongly echo jorge's recommendation. in my time at microsoft, of all of the customers i visited and worked with, i never saw nic teaming work well for the customer.for more info, this blog post talks about the risks of nic teaming from the viewpoint of a someone that worked in the networking escalation queues for microsoft: http://cbfive.com/blog/post/Considering-Network-Teaming.aspxhth/richhttp://cbfive.com