Question : Two Network cards in one Server 2003 whats the best configuration

Hi
I have a client who has just purchased a new server running Windows Standard server 2003. The server motherboard has two network cards on board.
The client has odd bits of cabling running round his buliding with 1 floor connect by Enthernet CAT and others by BNC coax! He has media convertors to convert those floors running coax. The coax cable runs through the building to other media converters were it is converted back into cat5. This side of the network obviously can only ever run 10mbs and there is so intelligent switching.

What I would like to do is to give all the floors running CAT5 traffice through one card on the server. This is a one gig card and will coonect to a switch through a one gig port.  I would like to connect the floors running the old coax cabling to the other 1 gb card through a media convertor. My hope is that the people running on CAT5 should experience a much better service. Currently all the network traffic is running through the first one gig card on the server.

On the card in the server that is currently connected  have assigned on an IP address of 192.168.254.240. DHCP and DNS is running on this server and the DNS for the clients is 192.168.254.240 the server address. The gateway address is 192.168.254.241. We are taking around 10 machines connect by CAT5 on on floor and the number of machines the end up being fed by coax somwhere in the chain is around 15. Re-cabling is out of the question for the moment.

Should I configure the second card with the same address or should I configure it with a different IP. Will the traffic pass freely between the two networks? Printers are dotted around the building and so traffic has to flow between the floors some times.  A point to note is that the main net Switch has 2 giigabyte ports and supports VLAN's. Please let me have your suggestions. Thanks in advance

Answer : Two Network cards in one Server 2003 whats the best configuration

You shoudl use a different IP Address on the second card.  In fact I don't think Windows will let you use the same IP Address.  It sounds like you have a sizable network, if that is the case it will probably be better to have a router handle this instead of having your Windows 2003 server do it.