The other day I was wondering, what can I do with the second NIC on my desktop-turned-server?

questions

Can I:

  • Use it to route traffic based on a VLAN?
  • Use it to make a pfSense router?
  • Separate subnet per NIC?
  • Increase overall network throughput?

Should I:

  • Use it only for NAS traffic? (which is a VM on the server)

Is there any benefit to using it?

Also, what is trunking? Heard this so much, but don’t think its relevant.

research

nic interface

It’s an Intel I218-LM.

Use the following to display the interface information:

lspci | grep 'Ethernet'

An option would be to create an aggregated link with the two nics.

Using LACP is supported by both the Ubiquiti switch and Proxmox. This would increase redundancy but the throughput is still limited by the nic’s and devices.

I don’t really think I would gain any benefits from aggregation.

https://kb.netgear.com/000051185/What-are-link-aggregation-and-LACP-and-how-can-I-use-them-in-my-network

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Network_Configuration#_linux_bond