Two networks?

[TeePee]

I currently have a very common setup, with all the PC's in my house connected through 10/100 NIC's to a 10/100 switch which is also connected to my ADSL router.

I have just obtained a couple of gigabit cards, which I want to use with two WinXP Pro computers for file transfer.

What I want to do is add the NICs to the machines, and use a crossover cable between the two allowing gigabit transfers without upgrading the switch, but both machines have to remain connected to the 10/100 network for internet access. Will this work? What settings will I need to change to ensure the file transfers are using the gigabit link?

[Moby-Dick]

just set a route to the other machine with a low metric cost
the command line is "Route add".
There should be a help file on the command line.

[Jiff Lemon]

You won't see any benfit IMHO.

Do a transfer between the two machines now, and what the network tab of taskmanager - You won't be flooding the network card.

[TeePee]

Actually the SCSI RAID arrays on both machines are more than capable of flooding the network, but thank-you for your comments, as ever.

[Rythmic]

If you don't want to play with the CLI, theres actually a metric box in your advanced tcp settings. Just set your 100Mbp/s card to a higher value than your 1000Mbp/s card. I have heard that some gigabit cards don't like a crossover cable - but no personal experience.

Must be a fairly nice RAID setup - what're you running? When you look at most forums/newsgroups, Jiffs comments would probably suit as theres a fair few people trying to run a IDE RAID 0 array and a 1Gbp card off of a single PCI bus, which offers virtually no benefit.

[Paul Adams]

If you don't want to play with the CLI, theres actually a metric box in your advanced tcp settings. Just set your 100Mbp/s card to a higher value than your 1000Mbp/s card. I have heard that some gigabit cards don't like a crossover cable - but no personal experience.

I can confirm I've experienced a problem with gigabit cards connected via a CAT6 crossover cable - collision city.
Windows 2000 Server on both ends kept reporting "network cable unplugged" then "local area connection 1000mbps" intermittently, they were very unhappy until we got a switch in between.

These were Compaq/HP DL-something servers using slot-in Compaq (Intel?) NICs (not onboard).