Windows 11 - Use 2 network cards

Software & Operating Systems
1

Hello all,

I need help with network configuration on Windows 11.

On my network I have a small Ubuntu server/NAS that is connected to internet through a 1Gbps NIC using 10.0.1.2 IP.
On the same machine I have a10Gbps network card with IP 192.168.1.1 that is connected to a Windows 11 computer.

The Windows 11 computer is connected to internet using the integrated 2.5Gbps NIC with IP 10.0.1.X.
The same Windows 11 is connected to the server directly using a 10Gbps NIC with IP 192.168.1.2.

On Win11 I have mapped a network drive pointing to a shared folder on 192.168.1.1.

The issue: Every time I copy files to/from the mapped network drive, windows is using the 2.5Gbps NIC limiting my speed.

How to configure Win11 that will allow me to use the 10Gbps network for file transfer to 192.168.1.1?

So far I have:

  1. Set fMinimizeConnections in registry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WcmSvc\Local. - Did not worked.
  2. gpedit.msc Administrative templates → Network → Windows Connection Manager → Minimize the number of …-> Enabled and set to 0 Did not worked
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Edit the hosts file on the Windows 11 machine and tell the machine that the NAS hostname resolves to the 10Gbit NIC’s address instead of the 1Gbit NIC’s address. Alternate flavors of this would be making up a hostname and a DNS A record for the 10Gbit NIC and then mapping a drive using that hostname, or making up a hostname (instead of using the NAS’s hostname) when editing the hosts file. That way you could keep management traffic to the gigabit nic.

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Would windows11 respect routing rules?

Like this?

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Hi Trooper_Ish - yea - setting up a static route at low cost would be a way to attempt to force the traffic to use the higher bandwidth card.

Before you do this though - you may wish to disconnect the slower NIC - and try the xfers then. If you see a speed improvement, then it will be worth diving into how to route the traffic properly. If not - well then - no reason to change things and / or have a 2nd nic. Just route everything through the faster one to a switch and test again.
This way you will know if the switch is also slowing things down.

Finally - windows copying of files is amazingly bad without some complex tuning - of which - I am not an expert. But I eventually switched off of windows completely to linux/ubuntu for 2 reasons. Telemetry and network copy speeds.

Hope this helps!

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Thank you for your support.
I have managed to solve the issue by uninstalling the 10Gbe NIC driver and than re-install.

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Basically “turn it off and on again” :slightly_smiling_face: I just love when it works like that!

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