Configuring two NICs on XP Pro and Win 2003

Hi,

Appreciated if anyone can help me on how to configure 2 LAN cards on Windows
XP Pro and Windows 2003 Server.

Problem is that when two LAN cards are installed, intranet will loss. That
means including DNS is lost, existing computers trust are lost, and so on.

Is there a way that we can specify which NIC to be used as the primary NIC?

Thanks.

 

Try doing a Google search on 'two NICs" or 'two internal NICs' (no quotes) -
I foudnd quite a few pages/articles.

 

Why do you need two NICs in the machine? What are you planning to use
the second NIC for?

Could you describe what you are trying to do. Is one NIC in a private
LAN and one on the Internet? Do you want the machine to work as a router?

 

Hi,

Done many times or won't post here.

 

Hi,

Thanks.

For the Windows 2003 server, the second NIC was added for trying to set up
an VPN.

According to the wizard, we need two NICs and set up one for the Internet
and one for the private network.

At one point, we did succeed in connecting to VPN server, but we could not
use the network resources. At the same time, local DNS cannot be seen by
other client computers using intranet anymore and all trust relationships
were gone.

Since we spent too much time on VPN but could not make it work, so we
decided to remove the VPN and in hope to restore the original intranet
environment and use Remote Desktop for the time being, and keep the second
NIC installed (but deactivated) for a while. But even doing that could not
bring back the intranet.

For the XP Pro box, the onboard NIC does not have WOL (wake on LAN), so
installed a second NIC with WOL support. This is also not intended to be
used as a router. We really only needs one NIC for this machine, but thought
there will be no harms if both are there. Well, it could be very wrong.

So my questions are:

(1) For Win 2003 VPN, are there any configurations for the NIC using for
Internet? Our original configuration was to have auto acquired IP address
and DNS. For the second one, we assigned it as when we were in the Intranet
environment.

(2) I assumed both NIC are connected to the LAN ports of the router?

(3) If the XP Pro has two NIC activated and connected to the router, is
there a way we can assign which NIC to do all the works? I don't know the
reason, but as long as the onboard LAN chip has been turned on (even without
any cable connected to the router), all traffics will by-pass the other NIC.

Thanks in advance and we really don't know much about networking.

 

To answer the last question first, on-board NICs can be a problem. If
you want to use the other NIC, try disabling the onboard NIC.

Now the numbered questions.

1. For VPN, if you have two NICs, one NIC needs to be connected to the
Internet and one to your local LAN. If you are behind a NAT router, you do
not need two NICs. You have only one NIC , and use port forwarding on the
NAT router to get VPN traffic to the server.

2. With two NICs, you would not plug them into the same box. One would plug
into the LAN hub/switch, the other would connect to the Internet. They would
be in different IP subnets.

3. As above, you should not have two NICs plugged into the same hub/switch.

Have you tried stopping RRAS to restore normal LAN operation?

 

Hi,

Many thanks for your kind explanations, and see if I could comprehend what
you've said:

(1) In general, I should not have two NICs (at the same box) both connected
to a router, or switching box. This will cause problems.

(2) If we have an NAT router, for which we recently purchased a new Buffalo
(WHR-G54S), we could use only one NIC and set up NAT table for port
forwarding (which is another headache). In any case, shall we ignore the
warning from Win 2003 Server and use custom set up for the VPN?

(3) I have tried to remove VPN server and RRAS but normal LAN operation
seems to be lost. I'd try to disable or remove all extra NICs and see if I
can bring it back.



Thanks.

 

You can Specify the IP Addresses to Both of them. Specify your ISP IP to one
Lan Card & Specify one Internet IP Address by this way you can
differentiation of Internal & Exter network. You will not loose you Internet
connection.

 

I got my normal LAN back

I removed both second NIC although there was a little trouble; I did not
remove from the device manager first so there was so-called "hidden" NIC
card left, and the infamous "packed scheduler miniport driver" left. I
eventually solved it.

Now I will be trying to use one NIC and have the router to forward port to
the server.

Hopefully, this will work.

 

Hi,

Thanks for your kind advise, and wish I could try your suggestion before
removing the NIC.

Just for the purpose of learning and future preparations, I'd like to
clarify if I understood your suggestion:

(1) Physical connection: I assumed your suggestion means to connect one NIC
to the Internet router and one to the switching box?

(2) ISP IP: You mean IP assigned by ISP (such as 220.xxx.xx.x) as the
private IP address of the card or?

(3) Default Gateway: What about the IP address in the default gateway of the
two NICs? I got warning from Windows when I tried to assign both to the
same using the router. I also read an lengthy article from the net
(although I did not understand 90% of it) about the problem using the same
default gateway for two NICs on the same machine. In any case, I know it
won't work but I don't know what will be the other default gateway to use
other than the router's.

(4) Preferred DNS: How should I input for this on the two NICs?

Sorry for so many questions about using two NICs. I am afraid of losing my
previous internal network again.

Thanks in advance.

 

this is what I am trying to do on my 2k server box Bill, I am having a devil
of a time getting the RRAS configured. It seems I can have the
lan(192.168.254.x) or I can connect to the card that has is the gateway and
have internet. Right now I cannot do both(which is what my end goal is)
Jon

 

The first thing you need to do before you enable RRAS is to make sure
that the NICs are in different networks. Don't plug them into the same
hub/switch. RRAS is a router, and needs to have its two NICs in different IP
subnets.

The machine can only have one active default gateway. For Internet
access, this must point out to the Internet. If this is what you want, leave
the default gateway box on the private NIC blank. This should not prevent
access to other machines on the 192.168.254 network. They are directly
connected and do not need to use a default gateway to communicate with each
other. They do this directly "on the wire" using hardware addressing and
ARP.

 

yep one will handle the 192.168.xxx.xxx network and the other will handle
the DSL which is on a totally different network. I seem to hear you saying
that the rest of the wired and wireless machines connect to the
192.168.xxx.xxx card with addressing handled by WINS and DHCP. Then gated
out over the other card to the internet. I am going to be finishing this
configuration tomorrow(when the network is idle).

Thanks for your help
Jon

 

If you configure RRAS as a NAT router it will do that for you.

You can use the mini-DHCP allocator built into NAT to configure the
clients automatically if you don't have a DHCP server. DNS should be OK
unless you are running AD. WINS is a different matter altogether.

 

Thanks for all the information Bill, I have that machine up now as an IP
router. The only bugaboo was getting the Vonage LD to work. I wanted the
Vonage router outside the lan however it needed DHCP for an address, I had
to configure the DSL as a DHCP server to give Vonage its ip, then allow RRAS
to give addresses to the lan... took much more time than I thought but it is
running now.

Jon

 

Glad to hear it's working.