server bandwidth and multiple network cards

[sneakyimp]

I'm wondering a couple of things about my LAMP stacks:

1) How do I get a list of all the network cards installed in a linux box? I've run this command and it shows 2 network cards which is probably all of them:

mii-tool -v

2) How can I check the percent utilization of a given network card? I.e., at any given time, what linux command will tell me the how much of a network card's bandwidth is being consumed? I've checked both ethtool and mii-tool and I don't really see any helpful stats.

3) How can I make sure that a linux box will optimally use both network cards? I'm a bit fuzzy on how IP addresses and network cards and hostnames work together.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

[jazz_snob]

Low level reporting maybe with nestat? The values reported are cumulative.

ifconfig if you have it will list network cards, even virtual ones I believe, for me thats /sbin/ifconfig

Otherwise I've used cacti to monitor traffic.

[sneakyimp]

Cacti is looking pretty good to me. Just have to figure out how to install it...