# What to do with 2 network connections to the same network

## braindead0

So finally work is warming to *nix (well, sorta forced into it by circumstances).. and I'm building a new development machine, figured I'd got gentoo and VMWare for all my windows stuff.

Long story short, I've got 2 network connections in my office to the same network, and I'm not sure how to best leverage them.  Currently (Windoze host) I just let windoze do whatever, I figured with linux I should have a ton more options?

Thanks for any pointers/advice/tips...

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## danomac

I'd assign one of the lines to the VM and one to your workstation.

You'd be able to set up a completely separate subnet with the VM with it's own routing and firewall, and you could use it to have several test machines VMs that don't share a single network line with your main development machine.

This way if you bork the test VMs (and/or their network) your development machine should still be OK.

Not really sure what else I'd do with two connection besides the above, maybe bond them together?

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## braindead0

One can already do what you're describing with host only networking, no need for a dedicated line in that case.. Generally my test/dev vm's don't need access to the net at large so for any whacky stuff I usually use host only anyway.

Bonding requires support on the switch I think?

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## NeddySeagoon

braindead0,

What about failover or load balancing ?

Yep, bonding needs to be suppoerted at every hop.

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## braindead0

I was thinking load balancing might be the simplest way to go..  Most of the howto's I've seen appear to be aimed towards multi-ISP use, but I'd think the same principals would apply?

I don't really need failover.. heads would roll downstairs if we lost network connections here  :Wink: 

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## zeek

Are those gigabit connections to a lan, or wan connections to an isp?

If they're just connections I wouldn't bother, there are much more interesting things to play with.

If they're wan connections the Shorewall MultiISP support is a good starting point.  http://www.shorewall.net/MultiISP.html

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## braindead0

gigabit connections to internal lan.. However I tend to get much less than gigabit performance outta them..  I often have need to transfer multi-terrabyte files to servers so it's possibly worth it to eck out more performance.

On the other hand, I'm going to be telecommuting full time in a few months.. so maybe not worth monkeying...

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