Connecting two CAT6 cables together
Connecting two CAT6 cables together
Hello, PC#1 is a Windows 7 RAID6 setup with 20TB of storage. PC#2 runs UnRAID with a 50TB capacity. My aim is to move the entire 20TB to the new 50TB UnRAID system as quickly as possible. Both machines have dual Ethernet ports. Should linking both PCs via two CAT6 cables in between yield better speeds than using just one? How should the teaming of these cable connections be handled? Is this done within the Windows 7 environment or configured in the BIOS for both devices? Also, does connecting both CAT6 links necessitate a router on each computer, meaning they connect directly to the router rather than to each other? Your insights would be greatly appreciated for optimizing data transfer speeds.
In windows 7 you need to do it in the driver, there is no teaming in the os. You can do it without a router, router is l3, teaming is l2 If you can run windows 10, you can use smb3, which would be better than teming here, and fill the speed of both links.
The NIC Teaming approach isn't suitable here since it relies on Load Balancing. When initiating a file transfer, only one interface is utilized. A second user would switch to the other interface. Concepts like Link Aggregation or LACP are comparable. As discussed, you'd need a method to distribute the workload from one session across both links—no router needed, it can be implemented peer-to-peer with static IPs. SMB3 also offers Multichannel functionality for this purpose. Windows 10 supports it; Windows 7 might not. If UnRAID uses SAMBA, enabling it through a configuration file should be feasible. In practice, you'd likely achieve speeds above 2GB/s without needing high bandwidth for small files.
Thank you for your contributions on Windows7ge and Electronics Wizardry. Your insights were very helpful. I’m moving away from the concept of combining two CAT6 cables; it seems more complicated than useful. I plan to use just one CAT6 cable between the computers. Regarding your question about Windows 7 recognizing share folders from an UnRAID server, I’d appreciate guidance on whether linking two machines via a single CAT6 wire automatically establishes network awareness. My main aim is to move 20TB of data to my UnRAID PC, and I’m unsure how to display shared folders on my Windows 7 machine. Additionally, what’s the most effective tool for migrating large volumes of data? I’m thinking about using Robocopy but wonder if there are superior alternatives worth exploring. Any advice would be invaluable.