[jk100]

I have a single PC running Windows XP Pro w/ SP2 that has 2 network cards.

I need to configure things to use the first network card and the first Internet connection for FTP client and server use and ALL web browsing.

Then I need to configure the second network card to connect to the office LAN and NOT use its associated second internet connection for any Internet related use.

I'm using Windows XP networking for the LAN setup through a Linksys router. Both Internet connections are from the same Cable ISP.

Any help on how/what to configure would be very appreciated.

[jstrike]

nic 1 = Internet
nic 2 = Office Lan only.

Try disabling the default gateway on nic 2.
... or...
Set the default gateway for nic 2 to the same ip address as the default gateway for nic 1.

If you receive your IP configuration via dhcp then you will have to hard code your information on nic 1 which is going to cause problems if your IP address changes after your lease expires.

[Curlyben]

I have to ask WHY ?
Remember the KISS principle, you are trying to make things overly complex.

[retsoksirhc]

Ah, I was under the impression that the FTP server would have to be accessible from the internet, also... In that case, jstrike's solution wouldn't work.

[jstrike]

Ah, I was under the impression that the FTP server would have to be accessible from the internet, also... In that case, jstrike's solution wouldn't work.

FTP Client... and even then I'm not sure my solution will work, especially if he's getting his ip settings from DHCP. He'd have to hard code his ip address, subnet mask and default gateway. If his IP address changes there's going to be/could be a conflict and he probably won't be able to access the office lan.

Unless the office lan is totally bogged down and the second internet connection is just his, I doubt there'll be a performance gain.

You could actually accomplish the same thing with a single nic using the alternate gateway address since all the information is going to be going over the same copper till it hits the gateway.

[retsoksirhc]

Hah, whoops, I read the OP wrong. I thought he wanted to use the secodn one JUST for ftp, then use the web through the office.

You'd have to add a static route to your routing table. Most likely, the default gateway right now for the 0.0.0.0 network is set to your office router, with a metric of 20. You can a gateway in the advanced setting for the new connection, leaving the IP and DNS settings to whatever the ISP tells you (probably obtain automatically). Add a gatewayof whatever you get from your ISP, with a metric of LOWER than 20. That means it will try that one before the one on your office LAN. Then, you'll also have fault tolerance, because if you can't get out to the net from that card, it will just use the office LAN as a backup. To not have it use the office lan as a backup, you'd have to configure those settings manually, and not include a defualt gateway. This will only work if you're all on one subnet in the office. (If it's a small office, you probably are)

It might be easier just to put a laptop in there to connect to the net, and get a KVM switch. Plug the keyboard and mouse into it, and you can switch between them with the click of a button.

[jk100]

Sorry… Perhaps I should have given some background to lend meaning to the question.

The FTP is used heavily to transfer very large multimedia files between us and clients. The LAN is also used heavily for standard web surfing and email functions. The original single internet connection we had just became overloaded.

The solution we thought was to simply have a second separate Internet connection and cable its second modem directly to the second network card installed in the workstation used for the FTP.

So the first card is connected to a switch, then to a router, and then to the first Internet connections modem. The second card is connected directly to the second Internet connections modem.

The plan is (be it a bad one) is to isolate all FTP and web traffic on the one workstation and force it to use only the second Internet connection and only use the original network card for LAN print and file sharing activities.

I had thought I'd solved the issue by defining in the router to 'filter' the port assigned to the workstation with the FTP so it was prevented from accessing the internet. It seemed to work accept for various reasons the assigned port number changes occasionally and the first thing we know about it is the LAN is hammered until the router definition is update with the newly assigned port number.

[retsoksirhc]

Ah, in that case, you shuold be able to set a manual IP configuration on the first card. If you use the same IP addressing scheme as the router, you should still be able to connect to the local network, and then just leave the default gateway empty. If you have a linksys or netgear oh similar router, usually there are some address outside of what DHCP will give out. Check to see what the DHCP settings are on the router, and if it's something like 192.168.0.100-192.168.0.200, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, you can usually set the computer's IP to something like 192.168.0.99, DNS server to the router's IP (which in this case would usually be 192.168.0.1), and no default gateway. Then, it would only go to the addresses on that specific network, not anywhere outside. Once you set up the other card, it would have a default gateway for the ISP, which it would use to get outside.