A Theoretical Question

[Caged Anger]

Say i should take a second ethernet card,
insert it into an open pci slot,
and then connect it,
:confused: would there be any kind of benefit to downloading and surfing?

[EXEcution]

Why (theoretically) would there be any kind of benefit? Unless your card or ethernet port is somehow damaged then possibly. But the ethernet ports don't give you the download and upload speed you get from your ISP, they simply serve as a means to connect a cable from your modem to your computer to receive data.

[Caged Anger]

nono, 2 different card, connected simultaneously through my router to one system

[EXEcution]

nono, 2 different card, connected simultaneously through my router to one system
In that case probably not since it would split the connection speed in half and you would still end up getting the same speed.

[BobtheCkroach]

You shouldn't get any benefit. Your ISP will allow you so much bandwidth (let's say 4 meg). First off, If you click "download", it's probably not going to split it up on the NICs - it'll all come down one or the other. Second, if you're referring to downloading multiple things at once, some on each NIC - if your not taking up your entire bandwidth, then both downloads theoretically run @ max speed on the single connection...if you are taking up your entire bandwidth (say 4 meg), then you can't get above that no matter how you split it up.

Basically, your NIC isn't the bottleneck - your ISP download is. Remember, once the info hits the router/switch/hub, it'll speed to your box via Ethernet, most likely @ 100 meg. But it's only getting to your router/switch/hub @ 4 meg - so even if you've got 2 connections from the router/switch/hub to you, you're still waiting for the info to come into the router/switch/hub @ a much slower speed.

[Caged Anger]

ahha, makes sense

[ME BIGGD01]

actually if you are using the onboard nic and want to switch to a pci card, you have to look and a few things.

first what onboard nic are you using nd how does it work on the board such as what is in the same lane.

i have switched many onboard nic's to an intel pro based nic which handles many things better instead of using the cpu like the onboard nic.

i take it you are looking to use 2 nics to double the bandwidth and this sort of thing does not work and will or may actually slow you down. this sort of thing use to work with dial up modems where you would use 2 modems to double the bandwidth but that is not the same as broadband.

[Caged Anger]

I was actually pertaining to the sue fo an onboard VIA NIC Adapter and a pci NIC