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what is the benefit of this old style network

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techidave:
I was at a friend's place of business today and noticed this about his network of 3 computers running XP.  Each computer had 2 nics in it.  One is for the internet and one is for the local network.  he doesn't know why it was done this way nor does he really care since he isn't into computers.  Looks like all cabling is Cat 5.  One of the computers acts as a server.

So my question is:  Why would this have been done this way in the first place?  What benefit could it have given over any other style?  I call it old style but maybe it isn't??

Dave

rgdot:
Separate or isolate local traffic from internet traffic for security...that's one possibility. Crude but has been done.

Renegade:
I used to have multiple NICs for multiple Internet connections. One computer was WAN facing. It reduces the attack surface and protects computers on the LAN that have no direct access to the WAN except through the front-facing server. It's easy to setup and cheap.

iphigenie:
still very commonly done on server clusters

security is one reason, another is performance - two sets of NICs means that any intense internet traffic will not affect the internal applications communications. If there was remote access or large downloads/uploads occasionally, it might have been a consideration.

Also means that if the internet network is under load or attack, there is the other network to reach the machine to make changes, maintenance, monitoring etc.

techidave:
So was this more commonly done on smaller networks?  Perhaps to reduce the use of a firewall?  Which I don't think I have seen one of these.   :(

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