A few weeks ago, I picked up a Rosewill RNG-407-Dualv2 for my home server. It’s a dual gigabit NIC, that Amazon had for less than $40. Thanks to Hyper-V and an Ubiquiti managed switch, I was able to quickly set up port channel, which gave me some extra speed on network operation, as well as separating my VI network traffic from my management traffic.
Since they were so affordable, I decided to pick one up for my desktop as well. My desktop runs Windows 10 Pro, with Hyper-V. I figured I’d set it up the opposite way from server, with the desktop getting the port channel 2 gbps connection, and my VM’s getting my existing onboard 1 gbps connection. Little did I know that this was going to be a bit more of a hassle.
As any decent IT guy would do, I tossed aside the provided driver CD, and jumped online to grab the latest drivers. And then the fun started.
Rosewill’s drivers installed as expected and I suddenly had two LAN interfaces as expected. However, Microsoft does not support teaming in Windows 10 natively. That was probably something I should have investigated before buying this, but what’s a home tech project that doesn’t have a few surprises?
I did some checking on Rosewill’s site, however, it was sparse on details and instructions. There was a diagnostic driver that had a folder called teaming, however attempting to install it was blocked by Windows due to incompatibilities.
At this point, I was starting to get concerned, so I decided to check with the chipset manufacturer and see what generic drivers they had. Fortunately, the network chip is a Realtek product, so they had several driver options on their website.
I download the latest Windows 10 drivers, and install. They are more recent than the Rosewill ones, so I had high initial hopes for them. Alas, there was still no way to configure teaming from the driver side.
Realtek had a diagnostic driver, so I attempted an install of that. Everything seemed great. Network cards showed up in network devices with Realtek Teaming driver, and no alerts anywhere. So, I fire up the Realtek Diagnostic Tool, and it fails with a protocol error. I do some Googling, and turn up an old driver on AsRock’s site of all places that claims teaming abilities.
Deciding that I have nothing left to lose, I download and install the driver pack. I try to load the teaming utility, and it comes right up. I am then able to set up network teaming through the rather archaic looking utility. After a quick port channel config on the switch, I’m able to get connected.
As a test, I start copying some large files to two separate systems to maximize speed. Right away, I hit 1.5gbps, which is exactly what I want to see.
For now, I’m satisfied, however, I suspect I’ll be trying the Realtek Diagnostic drivers again, since I’m not sure why those wouldn’t work, but an older AsRock driver for Realtek would.