Working with multiple NICs
Ever since the programmers.org server crashed due to a hard drive failure (mind you, while I was doing a defrag) it has been dropping off-line periodically (we are talking months here). I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what was happening and why… all to no avail.
Finally one day after it dropped offline I trotted over to the console to see that it’s IP address was cut short. Oddly the last 2 digits seemed to have been cropped off. Checking all of the TCP/IP settings on both NICs in the machine the only thing I could find with any similarity was the DNS of the second NIC which was set to the LAN DNS… that similarity was that its string size and the string size of the newly cropped ip address were the same. Weird.
After tinkering around a bit with the settings I clicked apply and noticed a message I had seen previously but not really read. It said, as best I can recall, something to the effect of “Multiple DNS are intended for redundancy and may not function properly if not on the same network.”
HUH? What’s this I thought…. when I suddenly realized I did not need the second NIC to have a DNS at all since it was being used to communicate with the NAS and not the outside world. PLUS the other NIC was set as the primary so I could still browse the web from the machine as need be. Voila. No warning message, and no more server falling offline. Finally.
Until next time, happy coding 
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