4 NICs in Win Server 2003. Why?

[kc0eks]

Hello all,

I took over IT work for a business here not long ago and was thrown into a horribly designed network and pretty much everything else. One of the things I still do not quite grasp is the following:

it has a total of 4 NICs all connected to the same switch, subnet, with different IPs. The network only has about 10 clients, none of which are really heavy use, moderate use at best. Most of the traffic is SQL, and filesharing/printing.

What I have been unsure about is why is it setup this way? I do not see much use for it. It does not have load balancing of any sort, just 4 NICs. Windows also likes to complain about duplicate names on the network because of this.

So, please help me understand. Why? and should I just get rid of the extra connections?

Thanks!

 

[thecoldone06]

Does it run IIS? Maybe the previous tech didn't know how to run multiple websites on one IP Address accessing different ports. That's my only guess as, no, I don't see there being any reason for 4 NIC's like this in one box.

 

[kc0eks]

Does it run IIS? Maybe the previous tech didn't know how to run multiple websites on one IP Address accessing different ports. That's my only guess as, no, I don't see there being any reason for 4 NIC's like this in one box.

I figured I would throw this out there as it really confused me, and searching for an answer just left me even more lost as to why it is like this.

As for IIS, it was installed and running but not used or configured beyond defaults. I removed it, since it was not used.

 

[thecoldone06]

Before you go to remove the NIC's, I would take an inventory of what applications use the different IP's. What the clients, other servers if applicable, and devices such as firewall use those IP's for. The last thing you want is to take them out and have people start saying that this or that doesn't work anymore.

 

[kc0eks]

The clients all use the servers network name to connect to, so it doesnt appear that anything is hard coded to use the other IP address's. Granted if I do go ahead with this, I will only disable the un-needed NICs and leave it installed in case I missed something.

I really wonder how some people do this line of work...

 

[allanc]

Hello all,

I took over IT work for a business here not long ago and was thrown into a horribly designed network and pretty much everything else. One of the things I still do not quite grasp is the following:

it has a total of 4 NICs all connected to the same switch, subnet, with different IPs. The network only has about 10 clients, none of which are really heavy use, moderate use at best. Most of the traffic is SQL, and filesharing/printing.

What I have been unsure about is why is it setup this way? I do not see much use for it. It does not have load balancing of any sort, just 4 NICs. Windows also likes to complain about duplicate names on the network because of this.

So, please help me understand. Why? and should I just get rid of the extra connections?

Thanks!

Two would be make sense ...
One for internal network and one for external.

 

[kc0eks]

Two would be make sense ...
One for internal network and one for external.

Now that I can agree with and understand. But they are all on the same network. I think this guy was just making it look cool, maybe.

 

[usacvlr]

They were probably for different services and for isolating one user from another so they don't cause some bizarre resource issue for the same service.. sql server on one, proxy internet on another etc ad nauseum. I'm sure it all made perfect sense to the genius who did it originally.

 

[iptech]

Yes, it's probably been configured as a multi-homed router. I've set up a server with three NICS, one for the WAN connection and the other two for discrete LANS.

 

[kc0eks]

As always I am amazed by the level of support offered here, and how quickly it is offered. I dont think I have ever seen anything quite like you guys

Thanks for the input all!