Dual NICs on Win 2000 Pro

[Tim]

I have a situation where my computers have two NICs. An
Adaptec NIC, and a 3COM NIC. The Adaptec NIC is used to
connect to a testbed network, and the 3COM NIC is used to
connect to the operational network, and thus the internet.
What is happening is, on some of the computers with the
dual NICs, the Adaptec NIC is loaded first, and the 3COM
NIC is booted second. In these cases, I cannot get out to
the internet. What I have to do is disable the Adaptec
NIC, and then re-enable it. This allows the 3COM NIC to be
used for internet surfing. What my question is, is, how
can I make the 3COM NIC boot up first, and the Adaptec NIC
boot up second? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanx,
Tim

 

[Mark Jones]

The problem you are experiencing is more than likely
nothing to do with the order in which your devices load,
but more to do with your network configuration.
If you have configured your network correctly your test
net should be on a different subnet than your default
gateway/proxy etc. If this is the case, and assuming you
have a name server of some kind it shouldn't matter how
many NIC's you have.
When you browse the net the first thing IE (or indeed your
machine) does is look for the server you specified, either
the one in the URL or proxy server if you have one
configured.
If your test net has it's own name server (and assuming it
can't connect to the root name servers or internal root
server) it will fail, as it will be unable to resolve the
hostname, either for your proxy or remote URL.
This can also be the case if you are using DHCP to
configure, as the first live NIC will find the first DHCP
server, again assuming you have a default gateway or name
server config in the DHCP details it will use them.

Basically you need to sort your network config by
specifying your ip settings on the Adaptec NIC manually
first (leaving out the default gateway and making sure the
subnet is not within your 3com network subnet i.e. is a
different network range). And make sure your 3com NIC is
configured correctly complete with default gateway if used.
If you have a name server on your test net also make sure
it knows your proxy IP/hostname as that would get around
the problem.


Hope that makes sense!