What happens if I plug a windows 10 pc to the same router using two NICs?

Question

I have a windows 10 PC. There is an onboard motherboard NIC and an installed PCIe card NIC. I have a consumer grade home router serving as DHCP server, switch, modem etc.

If I connect the PC to to the router using both NICs, without any other configuration, what will happen?

I ask because one NIC is a 10Gbps card and the router has one 10Gbps port, but this NIC driver has an issue that causes it to throttle upload speed to almost nothing. So I would like to use the other NIC for uploads but the faster one for downloads. Yes, I do have a 10Gpbs internet connection which actually provides a consistent > 4Gbps up and down. Of course the 10Gbps NIC works fine in ubuntu!

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '20 at 17:56

1

More or less nothing will happen by default. It will get a second IP via DHCP, but the default gateway, metric and so on will more less cause all the traffic to cross the primary/first interface.

If you were running Windows Server I would suggest creating a team, but as far as I know that isn't available on Windows 10.

answered Feb 28 '20 at 17:56

Zoredache

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Thx - its actually windows 10 pro if that makes a difference. – ThatDataGuy Feb 28 '20 at 18:02
AFAIK it doesn't `This feature is not available on Windows 10 or any other client operating systems.` - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/netlbfo/ – Zoredache Feb 28 '20 at 18:06
Sigh - If I could use linux full time I would! – ThatDataGuy Feb 28 '20 at 18:13

What happens if I plug a windows 10 pc to the same router using two NICs?

1 Answers1