Lan card is a network interface card that usually come buit-in with the computer’s motherboard. Lan card is commonly used to make a simple computer network to share internet at home but lan card is commonly used to connect to the small scale local area network to large redundance lan network.
Lan card is a network interface card that usually come buit-in with the computer’s motherboard. Lan card is commonly used to make a simple computer network to share internet at home but lan card is commonly used to connect to the small scale local area network to large redundance lan network.
Lan card is a network device which will connect the computers or the servers to the network infrastructure through a media transmission. Lan card works on the physical layer in the OSI reference model. Even though computers (or laptops) are not the only devices which have lan card, some devices such as printers; VoIP devices have lan card. I will not discuss more detail about this lan card, you can get more detail in Wikipedia (see Ethernet). This lan card article is still referenced to previous computer network scenario.
Server NIC connection
Server Lan card (Server NIC) connection is very important to pay attention to. Shared resources such as file and data servers require high network throughput for optimal performance. Servers (such as domain controllers AD; File servers; DHCP Servers etc)require stable high speed lan card – network connections at 1000 Mbps for optimal performance.
What is the recommended standard for server lan card connection?
1. Server lan card must be connected to 1000 Mbps lan switch connection. Almost all brandnew servers are now equipped with Gigibit lan card, so we should utilize this high speed lan card by connecting it with Gigabit switch too.
2. File and data servers must not be located on any bottlenecked network segments. Server lan card connection must be optimized and network bottlenecks must be resolved. Placing often accessed resources such as file servers; database server or exchange servers in close proximity to clients will improve network response times.
3. Server network segments must be fully optimized for network throughput. Many switches provide an auto-negotiation method for optimizing the connection speed and duplex settings. Due to different vendors implementations and the lack of an automatic negotiation standard, autonegotiation should not be relied upon. Numerous duplex and/or speed mismatches can result in spurious unpredictable network performance problems and errors. This can be easily avoided by configuring the speed and duplex settings manually for the switch and the host lan card.
4. Network duplex setting must be identical on both switch and server lan card. It should also be noted that some server applications suffer performance problems when optimized at full-duplex. If network performance problems are being attributed to lan card throughput under high load then it is recommended that the use of half-duplex be used. The duplex setting should be manually set at both the switch and host lan card to avoid duplex mismatches.
5. The lan switch must have its server switch-ports configured for STP port-fast. STP port-fast (fast-start) is a feature available on most intelligent switches, which improves the initial network connection response time. It has been noted that with this feature turned off that certain hosts may time-out when connecting to the network for the first time.
LAN Card - server connection
The above diagram summarizes the effort to maximize the server lan card performance. Switches are layer 2 devices in the OSI model.
Computers lan card connection
Even though client computers lan card is not as critical as server lan card, but the following guidelines can be used as a best practice in connecting to the networking infrastructure.
1. Use UTP Cat 5e cable which supports Gigabit Ethernet network. Eventhough you are using 100BaseT Ethernet network, it is a good idea to prepare the lan cable that will support Gigabit Ethernet network. In the next several years time you might upgrade the 100BaseT Ethernet with Gigabit Ethernet, and you still can use the cabling infrastructure that support this Gigibit Ethernet network.
2. Use industry standard coloring system in crimping the UTP cable into RJ-45 connector. You can learn more detail about cabling in network cabling.
3. Make sure that you have available lan card backup with you at least 2 lan card in 100 computers in case you have a damage on board lan card in the computers. Mostly all new computers come with built-in lan card, and always available PCI slot that you can use for future PCI lan card into this slot when the built-in lan card is faulty. And make sure that you know how to disable the onboard lan card, in some occasions a broken onboard lan card experience a device conflict with the PCI lan card unless you disable it. And also make sure that RJ-45 connector of the faulty onboard lan card is insulated with the tape. This will prevent plugging the LAN cable into the broken lan card connector.
4. Make sure that maximum lan cable is 100 meters and the minimum is 0.6 meter from the computers to the switch, and do not bend the lan cable with 90 degrees sharp.
5. Make sure that you use straight through UTP lan cable between the computers and the switch. While between swithes connection use cross type UTP lan cable.
6. For PC clients, network setup should be set to automatically receives the IP address from the DHCP server.
7. If you also provide a wireless access points in your network design for computers (laptops) which have wireless network card beside lan card, make sure that these computers do not use both lan card and wireless network card connected together to the network if you do not have much IP pool in your DHCP server.
Anything else?
In mostly corporate network infrastructures, the management of the information services is a must, with the deployment of network management software for network security and monitoring. For medium business, the deployment of security appliance is also widely used.
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