Intel NIC for dual 7i92 mesa boards? Trying to gather a "plug-and-play" solution

Intel EXPI9402PT PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express 2 x RJ45

My Google-foo has not given me a clear understanding on what I need in order to accomplish having a pair of 7i92 boards plugged into my Dell 7010sff PC running Linux Mint 21 with PreemptRT and LinuxCNC 2.9.

I have the onboard NIC (with an Intel chip) happily working with a single 7i98 now, but I am planning a build that will use a pair of 7i92 instead. 

Can I buy a dual port Intel NIC (PCIe x8) like the one listed above and expect it to just work with Mint/PreemptRT/LinuxCNC, while plugged into a pair of 7i92, after I configure the network and address'?

Do I need to do something like a single port Intel NIC for one card and use the onboard for the other?

I do not see anything in the doc's anywhere that actually details a use of two ethernet connected boards beyond the option to select a second board in PnCConf.
How does one connect two ethernet mesa boards to a single PC?

Thanks so much,
                            Jeff

 

You can use either 2 NICs or a switch to connect multiple Mesa Ethernet FPGA cards
If you use 2 NICs, you must of course configure the IP address on each NIC.

When using two Ethernet cards, they must have different IP addresses (I suggest 10.10.10.11 for the second card) EEPROM IP addresses can be set using mesaflash.

In addition, to minimize communication overhead the order of operations in the hal file
should be changed from

read1
read2
write1
write2

to

read-request1
read-request2
read1
read2
write1
write2

This avoids waiting for the first card to respond before requesting data from the second