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Accepted
Christian
Asked: 2015-09-11 13:53:54 +0800 CST

Windows: Ethernet-Connection number doesn't correspond to Ethernet-Hardware-number

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First of all, I have to apologize: I really couldn't think of a better title, I do not really know how to describe my problem in only a few words.

So here is my problem: I just installed Windows Server 2012 R2 on an Supermicro A1SRi-2758F. This mainboard has 4 Ethernet-Ports + one dedicated IPMI Port (which I'm not using ATM). The mainboard-manual describes the port numbers as follows:

  • Lower left: LAN1
  • Lower right: LAN2
  • upper left: LAN3
  • upper right: LAN4

However, my windows numbered them differently. To make it clear, I'm not speaking of the normal name which you can easily change but of the one you see in the properties of each port. Here it is for example: Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I354 #2

Windows named them as follows: - Lower left: LAN1 -> Ethernet I354 #3 - Lower right: LAN2 -> Ethernet I354 - upper left: LAN3 -> Ethernet I354 #2 - upper right: LAN4 -> Ethernet I354 #4

I want to change it because it leads to confusion as, for example Hyper-V Manager, shows the port number from windows, which doesn't correspond to the hardware port number.

Regards Christian

windows-server-2012-r2

2 Answers

  1. At installation, interface names are often assigned randomly. In an elevated cmd box, get list of NIC names:

    netsh interface ipv4 show interface

    Rename the interface to a more meaningful name

    netsh interface set interface name = "Ethernet I354 #3" newname = "LAN1"
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  2. Best Answer

    I ended up changing the "friedly name" of the NICs in the registry. I don't know if this is the nice way to go, but it seems to work and solved my problem ;)

    (Not an actual tutorial but I dont want to link to external sites, and the text of user "joshdan" gives a pretty good overview of what I did). https://superuser.com/questions/437755/rename-devices-in-device-manager

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