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Is There a Place for a $500 Ethernet Card?
prostoalex writes "ComputerWorld magazine runs a story on Level 5 Networks, which emerged from the stealth startup status with its own brand of network cards and software called EtherFabric. The company claims they are reducing the load on the servers CPUs and improve the communications between the servers. And it's not vaporware: 'The EtherFabric software shipping Monday runs on the Linux kernel 2.4 and 2.6, with support for Windows and Unix coming in the first half of next year. High volume pricing is $295 for a two-port, 1GB-per-port EtherFabric network interface card and software, while low volume quantities start from $495.'"
I wonder what has changed? I have never known the CPU to get dragged down by network traffic, but maybe in the network server markets it is different, However with the Ethernet chipsets being designed into the motherboard and integrated into the tight circle of RAM and CPU, it isn't clear there is a need for this.
How long before the network control is put into the CPU? It is going to be tough to beat that type of performance.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Is There a Place for a $500 Ethernet Card?
Of course there is, assuming the card performs as advertised. Sheer conjecture: the card likely has a lot of the smarts onboard. Maybe it has some of the TCP and IP stuff on board too (checksum, etc). Compare that to a crapbox $10.95 RealTek[a] card which generates interrupts like mad because it has no smarts and you'd probably be very suprised. (Think of comparing a decent hardware modem to a software based WinModem.)
[a] I had a sales-drone at Computer Boulevard here in Winnipeg just RAVE about RealTek cards. I said I really wanted 3 Intel or 3COM cards for a new work proxy server and he said 'Why? RealTeks are way cheaper and run at the same speed!' Retard.
Trolling is a art,
I give Realtek 6 months tops to make thier own knock-off of the card for $24.95.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
But not necessarily where the vendors think it is.
Back when I was working at a startup developing anti-DDoS technology, one of the biggest problems we were faced when implemented GigE, was the load on the PCI bus. (This was before we started using PCI-X).
It depends on exactly how customisable the network card software is, but if you could plonk a couple of those into whatever system you wanted - and if the cards themselves could do, say, signature detection of various flood types, or basic analysis of traffic trends then that is a very definite market.
I realise the core issue is not addressed (if your physical pipe is full, then you're fucked), but it takes the load of dropping the malicious packets off the host CPU so it can attempt to service whatever valid traffic actually gets through.
And then there is IP fragmentation. Bad fragments? Perhaps a dodgy fragmentation implementation in the stack? (you know which OS I mean) Lets just drop that before the host sees it and crashes.
I don't know, I can't find any real information describing what they do, but I can certainly see uses for this.
if your internet connection is anything less than fiber, which is about 99.9% of all connections?
The other 0.1%, obviously.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
if your internet connection is anything less than fiber, which is about 99.9% of all connections? Not to mention the fact that not many computers can actually handle that much data at once anyway
Listen, when I've got 30 web servers banging away on a single database server, I want each web server in and out as quickly as possible. Every bit of the handshake, query, and results is going to wrap up that much faster if things are faster, period. When you're dealing with a huge data-driven e-commerce site, where every page renders around a hundred or more queries, and there are dozens or hundreds of concurrent page views, this stuff really counts in the aggregate.
If you sell one more widget per day, all year long, because your web presentation layer is just a little more snappy, that's sure as hell going to pay for a $500 NIC.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The name Level 5 refers to the network protocol stack where level 5 delivers data from the network to the application, according to Karr. The company isn't concerned about any potential confusion with Internet Protocol telecom Level 3 Communications Inc. On the contrary, he quipped, "It's working in our favor. People say, 'Yes, we've heard of you. You're a big company.'"
As lawyers at Level 3 begin salivating at thought of all of the potential lawsuits.
We use Filers for storage at Gigabit speeds. Compared to our SAN/FC evironments, we see much higher CPU utilisation on our Sol 8 boxes, especially when attempting to get to Gigibit speeds.
$500 for a network card you have to have a good reason that you will need it. I am sure there are applications that will utilize it but for the price it may not be worth it. With sub $500 computers coming to age. It is probably cheaper just to split all your services onto smaller boxen and have a load balancing switch/router. Computers are cheap today $500 for a network card is steep and will only fill a niche market. Perhaps if the price was in the $50 range it would be more widely accepted. But with good enough systems at 1k and additional 500 could be used for a faster CPU other then a faster network CPU
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Each page renders a hundred or more queries? Sounds like you're better off investing in a better design than better hardware.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
If this card can do most of the work of IPSEC for me, it'd be a big win.
My main concern though is that with two ports, how can I be absolutely certain the packet has to go through my firewall rules before it can go anywhere?
Of course, the extra ports could be an advantage. If it could handle all the rules for you, then it might even be capable of functioning as a layer 4 switch and sending out a new IP packet before completely recieving said packet.
But, I'd want all the software on that card to be Open Source.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"Smaller boxes" is relative. Google's cluster nodes are dual Xeons with terabyte+ HDs. For Google it is small, for anyone else, that is powerful computer you're going to be paying alot for. If you're buying one of those computers you're probably going to look at one of these cards, and that is exactly the market they're looking for.
- Erecting yet another edifice brings on the huge and unavoidable overheads of yet another different CPU instruction set, yet another real-time scheduler, another code base, another set of performance and timing bottlenecks. Another group of programmers. Another set of in-circuit emulators, debugging tools, and system kernel. Another cycle of testing, bug fixes, updates.
- It sets up a split in the programming team-- there's now much more reason for finger-pointing and argument and mistrust.
- The extra money would usually buy you another CPU and lots of RAM, resources that would benefit every part of the system, not just the network I/O.
- The separate I/O processor usually requires the geekiest and least communicative of the programmers-- not a good thing. The manuals for the I/O card are likely to be very brief and sketchy, and rarely up to date.
- The I/O processor is almost always at least one generation of silicon technology older than the CPU, so even though the glossy brochures just drip with Speeeed! and Vrooom!-y adjectives, it's not that speedy in comparison to the CPU.
For examples, see the $4000 graphics co-processor that IBM tried to sell for the PC (IIRC the CPU could outdo-it). The various disk-compression cards for the PC. Also see the serial ports on the Mac IIvx (very expensive and not noticeably better). Don't forget the P-code chip for the PDP-11/03. All very expensive and blase' performance/$.