Teaming

This was very helpful. I will be going with OS 8.1 as a result of your information. Went with OS home 10 64 bit on a other build and I have had a lot of problems with it. Thank you for the help

metaldog50 wrote: Got the Z170 Extreme7+ this board has the lan teaming on it, but nothing in the book on how to get it done. Can anyone get me sorted out on this? Thanks for any help.

Configuring Teaming of the two Intel network chips in this board is relatively easy, but has one major limitation.

If you are using Windows 10, teaming is not supported with the Intel network driver, or any other network driver. This has been an issue since Windows 10 was released, and has still not been fixed. This is not an ASRock issue, but strictly a Windows 10 problem that Intel has not been able to overcome. You can verify this on the download page for the latest Intel wired networking driver: (sorry for the text only link, the forum link tool fails with some URLs. Simply highlight the link, left click on it and select an Open option)

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25016/Intel-Network-Adapter-Driver-for-Windows-10?product=83418

Otherwise, just install the Intel LAN driver from the link above, or the one on your board's download page. It's the same version for all included Windows versions:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20Extreme7+/?cat=Download&os=Win764

You will need a network cable connected to each network port on the board's IO panel, and to your router or network switch.

Once you install this driver, go to Device Manager, and open the Network adapters entry, and open the Properties of either of the two Intel network adapter entries that are listed. At the top of the Properties dialog box, there should be a Teaming tab. Click on that tab and follow the prompts to create a new Team. The Teaming tab is no longer shown when using Windows 10.

There are multiple types of teams you can create, depending upon your needs. Since PC users don't usually need a redundant or automatically switched backup network connection, you could try Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB) which causes network data requests to be shared between the two network chips, for faster download speeds. That of course is limited by your ISP's download connection speed.

It's a shame Teaming is not supported in Windows 10. Intel has been saying they will fix this situation since late 2015, but it has not been done after eight new releases of the Intel networking driver.