[techtalk] Ethernet question

[Brian Sweeney]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the help with the Sun stuff.  My friend emailed me again with
the following priceless quote:

"...no one here sees it as a problem that more time is spent maintaining
this network than using it."

Ah, the joys of System Administration ;-).

In any case, this next one's sort of related to my ongoing gig firewall
fiasco.

Does anyone know of a way, if you have a Linux box with 2 NICs, to force
them to go out over the wire to communicate with each other.

So, like the following:

-----------------			-------------------
		nic0==============interface0		|
Linux Box	    |			|		Switch|
		nic1==============interface1		|
-----------------			-------------------

I'd like the traffic from nic0 to nic1 to go through the switch, rather than
just stay internal on the Linux box.  The rather twisted logic here is that
in this case nic0 and nic1 are gig cards, and I've got to test the
throughput with and without the firewall running.  Unfortunately, I've got
no machine to test against with other gig cards.  So I need to test it
against itself.

Is this even possible?

-Brian "wishes he never said 'Sure, I can make a firewall.  Gig cards? No
problem.'" Sweeney