Motherboards Mobo's with 2 Gigabit LAN ports?

Why are 2 ports needed?

 

for 2 seperate networks ?

 

With the right driver/software - teaming?

 

Yep. That about covers it.

 

Very handy if you want to use a machine as a server, for a start.

 

I have the two on this computer bridged, windows says it's faster by quite a bit compared to when I had just one in use, don't know if I actually get any benefit from it but the placebo effect is wonderful

 

You can bridge them. You can have two different ISP coming into the one PC.
Also handy for Lans where the Ethernet goes in one and out the other.

 

If your RAID array can saturate a single, dual is nice.
Or, like said above, if you need to connect to multiple networks, like a router.

 

Using software such as Smoothwall, you can turn a rig with that motherboard into a router/firewall/VPN endpoint etc.

 

The real question is: why don't more motherboards have two ethernet ports? Currently it only seems to be the really high-end consumer boards that do, but for most casual users it's the old, low-end kit that gets used for server/firewall/NAS duties.

 

This.

I wanted dual on my Sandy bridge build (that is now postponed) and the motherboards that had it had a premium over the others even when that was the only difference between them. Both my current builds have two, I don't remember specifically looking for that either. Just seems it was a little more common/less expensive before.

 

We definitely do need a new standard as SSDs and Raid'ed spinners are already saturating gigabit links. I think there was talk of a 4.0 Gbps or a 10 Gbps NICs being made, a terabit link is way too ambitious at this stage.

edit: hey, only 2 grand: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-pro-10-gigabit-fx-sr-2-port-short-range-server-adaptor-pci-e

 

Thanks everyone, the reason I asked is I meant to order a PCI wireless network adapter but in fact ordered just a PCI network adapter! So now I have 2 network ports. Just wondering if it could be useful to me.