Splitting Network Paths with Two NICs to Get CUDA Working on RTX 5060 under WSL2 on Windows 11
Introduction While setting up CUDA for an RTX 5060 GPU on Windows 11 + WSL2, I ran into a somewhat unusual situation: The PC has two physical Ethernet adapters. The first one is connected to the main corporate/office network, which regular traffic (e.g. email) needs to keep using. The second one is connected to a separate "lab" LAN, and I wanted WSL2 to use that network for apt , CUDA, and…
Setting up CUDA for an RTX 5060 GPU on Windows 11 + WSL2 can be complicated when two physical Ethernet adapters are present. The first adapter connects to the corporate network, while the second is connected to a separate lab LAN. By default, WSL2 borrows the single route Windows uses, making it difficult to keep business traffic and lab traffic on separate physical paths.
This article explains how to use a Hyper-V virtual switch and networkingMode=bridged in .wslconfig to split the paths, allowing Windows to use the main corporate network and WSL2 to join the lab LAN directly with its own IP address. The process involves creating a Hyper-V virtual switch for the lab LAN, configuring bridged networking in .wslconfig, restarting WSL, setting the lab LAN's DNS server in WSL, and verifying the setup.
It is important to exclude Windows from the lab LAN network to prevent it from affecting regular traffic like email. After setting up, CUDA can be installed as usual.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
