Having 2 network cards on one computer

Hi!

We have a Windows Server 2003 which acts as a web server and also file
server.
I'd like to make the file server part accessible only from LAN (private
IP) and the web server part from public.

Can I attach 2 network cards to the machine and assign one of them a
public IP and the other a private IP?
Will it work?
Or is there a better idea for such a case?

Thanks.

Sam

You can do that or you could also create an alias ip address and assign the
webserver to listen only on the public IP. However bear in mind the network
load and the idea of multiple broadcast networks on a single NIC IMHO is
probably not a good idea for more than about 10 clients on a single server.

Hope that helps


<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Hi!
>
> We have a Windows Server 2003 which acts as a web server and also file
> server.
> I'd like to make the file server part accessible only from LAN (private
> IP) and the web server part from public.
>
> Can I attach 2 network cards to the machine and assign one of them a
> public IP and the other a private IP?
> Will it work?
> Or is there a better idea for such a case?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Sam
>

Yes, it will work. Two machines is a better idea!

The basic problem is that your file server is now directly connected to
the Internet. This exposes you to all sorts of nasties. Firewall software
would reduce the risk. You could block all traffic except tcp port 80 (which
is used to contact the web server) on the Internet-connected NIC.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Hi!
>
> We have a Windows Server 2003 which acts as a web server and also file
> server.
> I'd like to make the file server part accessible only from LAN
> (private IP) and the web server part from public.
>
> Can I attach 2 network cards to the machine and assign one of them a
> public IP and the other a private IP?
> Will it work?
> Or is there a better idea for such a case?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Sam