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Killer NIC K1 and Custom BitTorrent Client Tested
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Mar 24, 2007 08:35 AM
from the frags-and-files dept.
from the frags-and-files dept.
NetworkingNed writes "The new Killer NIC K1 is the successor to the much debated original Killer NIC card that offers the same features at a lower price: this time for about $170 or so. Not cheap, that's for sure. But in this review at PC Perspective, not only is the new card tested under the drastically updated Vista networking stack with improved results, but the free BitTorrent client that runs on the Killer NIC is reviewed as well; with it you should be able to download torrents without affecting online gaming performance. Enough to warrant a $175 network card?"
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Hardware: 'Killer' Network Card Actually Reduces Latency 292 comments
fatduck writes "HardOCP has published a review of the KillerNIC network card from Bigfoot Networks. The piece examines benchmarks of the product in online gaming and a number of user experiences. The product features a 'Network Processing Unit' or NPU, among other acronyms, which promise to drastically reduce latency in online games. Too good to be true? The card also sports a hefty price tag of $250." From the article: "The Killer NIC does exactly what it is advertised to do. It will lower your pings and very likely give you marginally better framerates in real world gaming scenarios. The Killer NIC is not for everyone as it is extremely expensive in this day and age of "free" onboard NICs. There are very likely other upgrades you can make to your computer for the same investment that will give you more in return. Some gamers will see a benefit while others do not. Hardcore deathmatchers are likely to feel the Killer NIC advantages while the middle-of-the road player will not be fine tuned enough to benefit from the experience. Certainly though, the hardcore online gamer is exactly who this product is targeted at."
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Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
The NIC has its own processor, will run a Bit Torrent client and save to its own USB drive.
But will it run Linux?Re:Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's the whole point of the story. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the whole point of the Killer NIC : It *does run* Linux.
The whole story can be broiled down to the Killer NIC being in fact a nice small router with loadbalancing/QoS/Pcket prioritizing. Plus a small server with it own mass storge pugable in USB.
The Killer NIC is nothing more than a glorified router shrinked to the size of a PCI card.
Once you get the basic idea there are only two quirks :
- It is sold completly ready to go. Whereas
- As this is a PCI card and not a box that must communicated of the internet, the driver can use special hooks and directly tap into the Windows TCP/IP stack. Thus the router can sort and select packaets before they even leave the computer. Thus joe's gaming traffic gets put in front with higher priority than the traffic generated by the dozen of spywares/trojans/virus/spam zombies running in background.
Basically it's targeted to the same people who need quad-core CPUs : geeks who want to hack it, and clueless users who need to still have performance even when everthing is crawling under the load of crapware.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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You could get a very good device that was exactly that four years ago - a snapgear firewall/router on a PCI card - they are the guys that started uClinux and gave it back to us. It's been so long they were bought out twice so the current name is different.
Re: (Score:2)
I wasn't speaking of broadband routers. (also because in that case, the verb "shrink" won't apply)
Did you read my post til the end before hitting that submit button ? That's what I referred to when speaking about hooks in the TCP/IP stack.
Spend the money elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're so worried about bittorrent degrading your performance, save your money - haul out that "obsolete" 1-2ghz machine and you won't have to leave your main box running (and costing electricity) when you seed.
Re:Spend the money elsewhere (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll still say that you don't need to trademark every silly thing that your card does "special". Like, "This case now with SafeCorner(tm) so that you're likely to get less BloodNStuff(tm) on your NetworkBOOST(tm)"
It just sounds way too much like you're marketing snake oil...
Parent
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Advantage of this is that you don't need to run you pc 24/7 and your resources aren't drained. Not to mention the fact that I can access my mail & initiate bittorent downloads anywhere on the planet from my smartphone.
Mo
There are cases where this would be useful (Score:2)
I know TCP offloading is one thing that a lot of people recommend with higher-traffic Asterisk instances too.
I doubt it is necessary for a home computer but could have a lot of other nice applications.
Re:No, but yes... (Score:4, Informative)
"It's not going to save any electricity. You rather have 2 boxes on while you're gaming instead of one, and while you're not gaming you still have one sucking electricity. There's no real energy savings here.
You might game for an hour or two, and download/seed for 24 - for 22 of those hours, your main box is off and not using electricity - and its more than likely that you can run the older box headless, saving even more juice; also that the video card in the older box doesn't run as hot ...
Parent
Re:No, but yes... (Score:4, Informative)
Compared to that a modern gaming capable system runs happily into the 400W+ territory. Even with all the advances in power saving modes on the peripherals and the CPU you are likely to find running an old P3 for router/firewall/P2P/file server/etc considerably more efficient compared to allocating these resources on your "main" box.
The only problem is the scarcity of CPU fans for P3s. There are none on the market. Athlon heatsinks/coolers for the older socket format often need cutting bits off and are also getting rare, so finding a suitable set to refurbish an old box may prove extremely challenging.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"Also putting in a switch in front would add latency."
Not really - the switch will examine the first few bytes in the packet, then route it. Its called "cut-and-forward", as opposed to grabbing the whole packet and then forwarding it - "store-and-forward". The switch can always figure out from the first 7 bytes (and usually less) which port to forward to. You won't notice a few nano-seconds.
Re: (Score:2)
99% of Ethernet switches on the market are store-and-forward, and cut-and-forward switches fall back to store-and-forward under heavy load anyway.
In short, you'd spend $1-2k to get a switch that does cut-and-forward instead of store-and-forward, and shave at most 0.6 ms or so off of your latency for 100Base-T. (Less if your game doesn't send packets at the 1500 byte MTU, which I think most games don't, as they don't need to send that much data at a time.)
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Firewire vs USB 2.0? (Score:2)
This sounds a bit like the difference between USB and Firewire, if I am reading the article correctly. The Killer NIC carries traffic without burdening the OS. It seems like this has possibilities above and beyond gaming. NICE.
Hence the Bittorrent client. (Score:2)
Like running a bittorrent client.
Which could even run while the computer is off.
(Network cards are powered by the WOL connector. And the storage could easily be a USB stick pluged into the card's port).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, UDP traffic is rather important for all of us who use NFS heavily. I haven't seen any Linux drivers for it, though (that doesn't mean they don't exist).
But a NIC with a CPU and memory that offloads the CPU and increases speed isn't new at all -- the existing cards just haven't been hyped up as much. The real question here is how the KillerNIC holds up t
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good point. However, for most home users, I would suspect that it would. Simply because the bottleneck (or rate-determining step, if you will) isn't their internal network or even the router but rather their cable modem. Sure, a home gigabit netw
Screw the "NIC" aspect but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Do they take your brain when you get one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just setup a test network with a workstation with that NIC, a test server, a sniffer and some test scripts?
You image the workstation so you can start clean with each NIC you're testing.
You use the sniffer so you can see what is actually on the wire.
You use the scripts instead of doing anything manually because you want to remove the human factor as much as possible.
YES! Those are all the reasons why you run your own test server instead of adding additional variables to a test. So, are you going to do the test correctly?
I guess not. Even with knowing every reason NOT to do that, you went ahead anyway.
So what I'm wondering is why haven't we seen any REAL evaluations by people who know what they're doing? Do the Killer NIC people simply refuse to provide hardware to anyone who has a clue?
So you didn't even bother to test against a mid-range card? You used the chip on your motherboard.
That's why you would use a sniffer.
And, once again, you didn't even go out and pick up a $50 NIC to compare it against.
That's why you script the tests.
And that didn't tell you something?
Seriously, you didn't test against a $50 NIC?
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They are not interested (Score:2)
No, they are just not interested. The people who understand what they are doing completly dismiss the card, and consider it as joke. :
In fact it can do nothing good for them. This card have only two target audience
- Joe six-packs, whose computer have become huge virus hideouts, pumping so much spam up to the point that th
Re: (Score:2)
If you have a 100Mbit NIC, there's a very good chance it doesn't have this feature unless it's Broadcom or Intel based.
An even better solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just get one of these [theinquirer.net]. An external hard drive with built-in wireless networking and a built-in bittorrent client. No computer needed to download.
Set it up, let it leach off of an unsecured wireless network until the owner catches on, then switch to another one. No DMCA letters (at least not to YOUR door), and gaming performance on *your* network won't suffer at all!
Yes, that's bad in several ways. But it's still an interesting/funny thought!
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Oh, I'm sure. (Score:2)
First, they'd have to figure out what was going on. That eliminates 99.9% of the people with unsecured wireless. Then, they'd have to actually call the police. That eliminates 90% of the
Seriously. Some time ago, my credit card number was used to call porn lines. On the statement, it had nu
Killer NIC? (Score:2, Funny)
paranoia, but paranoia is good from a security POV (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just referring to packets that are tagged, and when the packets are tagged as such, the NIC effectively ignores them if not specifically destined for its MAC (making same packets impossible to detect even with a hub and another box with a same nic). One could have NICs send out detailed, compressed data concerning addresses and ports, and perhaps even a complete duplicate dump of data being sent to a specific host, if requested remotely.
Now sure, this is the ultimate in paranoia. First, you would require complete complacency on the part of those designing NIC chips, and in many cases this is even done by contracted IC Design firms. There are just too many people involved to have some form of high level conspiracy, allowing for the ultimate in government control.
However, we now have a NIC that is effectively a machine of its own, making it inordinately simple for all sorts of black hat shenanigans. Even if one were to trust the company, a card like this, if exploitable remotely, would be great to set up a nice little monitoring station and even a spam relay on. How would you detect it, if you're a simple user and you don't have another Linux box or firewall to detect the traffic outgoing? Firewalls are also effectively useless (unless in a locked down state that few put them in) once a box is allowed access to NAT. There are simple ways to punch holes through firewall, and using NAT, keep them open with little traffic.
Of course, one could also just phone home every few hours anyhow.
Frankly, while I *like* real hardware NICs, I at least trust that Intel's 100% hardware NIC is going to be relatively unexploitable. It's a single purpose device, so you're not going to be (I hope!) easily loading a trojan on there.
This thing however? It sounds like you could load anything on that "NIC".
Stay away. We don't even know anything about this *company*, let alone it's security review process for the software running the NIC.
Re:paranoia, but paranoia is good from a security (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but most routers aren't designed by some team of "dudes" in a basement somewhere, selling snake oil.
Frankly, I wouldn't buy some no-name, discount router either. I'll stick with the big names, or at least names I know and can trust, or from companies that I see handle security issues. Unfortunately, many of the stores selling this discount crap should be shot... I have no faith that a router without any reasonable documentation, and without and real mention of how to get to the homepage, is going to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
<tinfoil>So you'll buy from the company the NSA would bother to target for subversion, rather than the no-account shop who flies under their radar. You fool, you fool.</tinfoil>
Re:paranoia, but paranoia is good from a security (Score:2)
I'm just referring to packets that are tagged, and when the packets are tagged as such, the NIC effectively ignores them if not specifically destined for its MAC (making same packets impossible to detect even with a hub and another box with a same nic). One could have NICs send out detailed, compressed data concerning addresses and ports, and perhaps even a complete duplicate dump of data being sent to a specific host, if requested remotely.
How would you hide this data from routers? Routers have to copy packets received on one NIC and send them out another NIC. If the NIC doesn't report such packets to the host doing the routing, how will the host know to resend the data? Keep in mind that many routers are not the little pre-built boxes, and some of those that are commercial routers run customized open source software. I use a regular PC running Linux as a router, and if you ever use "connection sharing" on Windows you're using your PC a
They have routers with BitTorrent Clients (Score:2)
why did not test it with a good nforce Motherboard (Score:2)
Other that have tested it with nforce boards have seen little to no differences in fps or ping and say the cost is way to high for what it does.
also new boards only have 1 or 2 pci slots and you may only have 1 free after you put in 1 or 2 big video cards and most people will want to hav
Re:why did not test it with a good nforce Motherbo (Score:2)
Quote from "TytusTytus"
Its that Gamer rip off branding again (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Routers (Score:2)
Skip the expensive NIC and make use of that old PC (Score:2)
The only Etherkiller I know... (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/ [fiftythree.org]
Or you could do this... (Score:2)
That's about the value of my old computer, so why not just let it run BT while I game on the new machine? I've still got unused ports in the router.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2)
No, YOU fuck off!
The "yes" and "no" tags indicate all the story headers that for some reason slashdot editors choose to end in a closed question like: Enough to warrant a $175 card? Yes using rhetorical questions is an accepted manner of getting your point across. However an open question might be even better, like "At $175, what makes this card so special?"
This is far beyond the reach of mos
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Look into DD-WRT or a similar "aftermarket firmware" on a compatible router. I suggest the Buffalo WHR-G54S - Cheap ($50 at Circuit City, $43 or so shipped from NewEgg) and fully compatible with DD-WRT.
The problem is not the CPU speed, but the fact that many routers have too small of an ip_conntrack table (or the equivalent if they do not run Linux). DD-WRT lets you bump up the size of that table and decrease the idle c