Slashdot Mirror
Killer NIC K1 and Custom BitTorrent Client Tested
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?"
Yes. Yes it is. Out there are people willing to spend money on gold-plated scart connectors. I say the more overhyped, overpriced pieces of junk on the market to separate these fools and their cash the better.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
The NIC has its own processor, will run a Bit Torrent client and save to its own USB drive.
But will it run Linux?One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
Your connection quality does not depend on your NIC and drivers, provided they are satisfactory and stable. Your upstream and downstream bandwidth and latency depend entirely on the quality of service that your ISP provides. No network interface card can affect the quality of the connection that your ISP provides, no matter what, period. A twenty year old NE2000 compatible NIC will do just fine for most broadband service.
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.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
$170 for an embedded (Coldfire?) computer on a PCI card is not that much, and it could actually be useful for other tasks like monitoring, logging and administration. The on-board FPGA could also be used to offload some processing jobs, but it probably doesn't have too many gates.
If you angle the K just right it almost looks like NIC 1701. And then round the 'I' a little bit and you have marketing genius!
Its called Dual Core with a 24mb/s connection.
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 $50 NIC?
Anyone wanna guess that NetworkingNed works for the shady company that makes this load of crap NIC? At least he had the semi-decency to post a link to the wikipedia entry rather than his company's own page.
It's not going to save any electricity. You rather have 2 boxes on while you're gaming instead of one, and while you're not gaming you still have one sucking electricity. There's no real energy savings here.
But energy saving aside, it's still a good setup. Spend that 175$ on a 500GB HD, and throw it in an old lifecycled 2GHz box (with enough RAM preferably). Run all the P2P apps you want on it. Use it as NAT/firewall (DNS if you want, and filtering proxy, etc). And LAMP server. Throw MySQL/PostgreSQL/Firebird or whatever DBs you need on it. And SVN/CVS/whatever-you-like repository, and continuous integration server. Host your personal wiki stuff on it. Use it as a file server. Make it a video/music server. Setup a VPN to access your stuff when away from home (and even Terminal Server if you want). Use it to do backups and burn discs. Set it up as a MythTV (or VDR) and/or Asterisk server. Install VMWare Server on it to do all your software testing (installations, deployment, running stuff on other platforms/distros, etc). Use it to re-encode DVDs or recorded shows to mpeg4 (XviD or x264). Install a DynDNS client (or whatever similar service, to keep it updated). Use it to automate X10/home automation stuff. And if the load is light enough and it's in a convenient location, it can be a perfectly fine family PC (check email/browse web/play mp3s/watch movies in mpeg4 or off youtube/google for recipes/check weather forecast/use it to sync your mp3 player's contents/whatever you want). Too many possible uses to list...
I wouldn't have a 2nd box just as a NAT/router or just for BitTorrent, but there's so many other uses for it - even for the average home user. A lot of families have more than one computer nowadays (and having one totally defeats the point of a ridiculously expensive NIC). I'd rather just stop BT while I play games and restart it after I'm done rather than buying this thing anyways.
Well, let's see. SCART is an analog signal, which can be degraded if the contacts aren't clean. Gold-plating helps to prevent corrosion of contact surfaces. While the results may be minor, it makes sense to me. On the other hand, gold-plated connectors for digital interfaces is absurd.
Just get one of these. 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!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Killer NIC? Is this anything like the EtherKiller?
This card wasn't designed with the common slashdotter in mind. We have well tuned linux routers that do QoS and filtering, we have older machines running the torrents and other services 24/7 consuming less power and producing less noise, while our main rig is a screaming NO2-cooled behemoth that dims the lights every time it switches contexts.
The average twit gamer doesn't have all that. They pawned their "old" P4 for 50 bucks to put down on their $200 X-Fi Ultimate, and THAT made such a "huge" difference in framerate because it "offloads" sound processing to its own CPU. In their logic, surely a $200 network card will also yield (simple-)mind-blowing enhancements.
These are the same idiots who are going to buy my "uber-framerate booster driver", which merely slows down the system clock proportionally to the price they paid me, thus seriously warping framerate calculations... just like in the old 386/486 days. Fools are so easily parted with their money!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I've always wondered if there was a world-wide conspiracy with NICs and key points on the net. Naturally, if you wanted to analyze all traffic that existed (yes, yes... imagine the CPU power required for that!) the place one would start would be the NIC!
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.
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 their "internets tube is clogged". They need some hardware QoS / packet prioritizing solution (plus a quad core CPU to run all those crapware threads), but can't write one themselfs (installing a full-blown linux router + traffic shaper is out of question).
-
The mid-range of power user isn't any of those two groups and doesn't see any advantage in it.
By the way some high-end on-board NICs talk directly to the Northbridge (usually through something like hyper transport) and aren't limited by the PCI bus speed.
It was the case with some of the earliest Athlon 64 chipsets (some VIA based mother board had direct NICs that where faster than the then nForce with NICs over PCI).
Of course that was before the PCI express bus, and not the case in those testvertisements.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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 *snip*
They are NOT called network interface card card's!
They are just called network interface card's, or NICs, or NI-cards if you prefer a stupid yet more correct way
Jebus
Yes, I can see how there could be problems, but it isn't any different from a router. Most routers that I know of are fairly powerful devices. They run the same risks as this card as far as exploits go.
and they don't need the pc to be one to use them.
I have seen a gold-plated "A/V USB cable". It cost several x £10 more than a normal USB cable.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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 listen to and perform security updates on a timely basis.
So, sure.. a router, a crappy router definitely, is an equal risk. That doesn't detract from *this* risk. As well, up until now, we haven't really had to worry about such a beast in a PCI slot of a computer. That can wreak its own special breed of havock, when you think of it.
like the 570, or 590 amd or 590 or 680 intel as they have build it tcp/ip offloading at full gig-e speeds. This card can't hit full gig-e speed with it's pci bus also how does it hold up with a pci sound card on the pci bus?
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 have a sound card in that last pci slot.
Yup, every thing they stamp "Gaming" on its 2x the price (or more in this case) just to RIP YOU OFF. Box sets, RIP OFF Gaming hardware, RIP OFF and more flimsey CPU "G" brands on Dell hardware, RIP OFF and you arnt covered by WARRANTY for OCing anyway. STOP paying the GAMING tax! dammit.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
There are a few home-user grade routers out there that will do all of this just fine. I'm extremely impressed with the D-Link Gamer Lounge router, for instance. I didn't have to configure anything, but I can play WoW with 100 latency, be talking on Vonage, while running a .torrent at full speed and be saturating both my upload/download (for instance, OpenOffice, which was downloading at over 2MB/s on a residential line). There were no problems on the Vonage end, either. And instead of spending $175 for each NIC card in the house, I only had to spend $XX for the router.
I suspect there are a few other similar routers out there now, too. They aren't the cheap $30 D-Links, though. I upgraded from a terrible AT&T Wireless Router. Yech.
So now I need a 170$ ethernet card because the newest MS OS has a crappy network performance?
I got a gold plated SCART cable for my Gamecube, the thing cost about 5€ and was the cheapest GC SCART cable available.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Skip the expensive NIC and make use of that old PC. Turn the old PC into a router (I used Gentoo Linux), setup some QoS, and no problem with performance (unless my ISP is having bandwidth/latency issues).
Mod the parent down/off-topic if you must, but this is actually a good idea. If they could turn the technology they have here into a router that can handle large amounts of connections, maybe some wireless and programs running on it (like bittorrent), I sure as hell would buy it.
At the moment, its not my NIC thats the bottleneck, its my router.
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 as a router, too.
Paranoia is well and good, but this is close to the what-if-they're-reading-my-mind category.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
<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>
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
For example, I think the VOIP gateway possibilities are intreguing. Among other things, if it is managed really well, you ought to be able to do SIP connections etc withot worrying about IRQ's while the vital CPU time is spent on the TDM cards' DSP.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
That's Network Interface Card Card;
That's Toilet Paper Paper...
I rest in your face hoser!
The only Etherkiller I know is
http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
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 numbers to call to dispute the charges. I did, and my money was refunded. One of the companies gave me the phone number that the perp called from, which was easily traced back to an address.
I went to the police and said "Look, you've got someone using stolen credit card numbers. Here's his phone number, his address, and proof. The companies he called may even have recorded evidence." I was told that since my money was refunded, I wasn't a victim, and they didn't want to deal with it. If they won't get off of their butt when HANDED a credit-card scammer, I can't imagine they'd get very excited about someone using bandwidth, either.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Don't know about Windows efficiency, but with dual core chips all this seems possible in software and without adding much overhead. Clearly this NIC targets gamers, so if Windows gaming performace stays as described in the article, the card might improve latency and FPS (although, as we see, by few percent only).
They seem to have a callback which sets a bit ready in userspace (i.e. in game process memory), so game doesn't have to synchronously poll for data. This is also possible to do with on-board NIC's, provided that driver framework allows it, as it is still the kernel that sets this bit. Recently lot of attention in Linux community was given to async interfaces to userspace, among them kevents, threadlets (lightweight threads) etc. Such interfaces could allow drivers to easily send data "ready" events to userspace callback, which sets e.g. a data ready bit, so main game thread doesn't need to poll and wait for it.
There are also similar interfaces in Windows, only the on-board drivers should probably be enabled to use it (and btw. there is a software QoS as well).
Another point is that multicore CPU's are now mainstream and a tasks, either kernel or userspace based, which e.g. processes network data and talks to hardware can be run at no visible cost to game performance, and in some cases this can even yield better latency as CPU's are faster than a NIC processor (for example with wireless chips when en(de)cryption is used).
To the numbnuts who added "yes" and "no": Fuck off.
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 most editors, however.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Thats why I tagged it yesnomaybe
Quote from "TytusTytus"
The client will most likely work fine on public torrent sites but I would hesitate to purchase this card if most of the torrents I am downloading are private. The majority of private trackers ban obscure clients, rendering the Killer NIC's strongest selling point to torrent users useless.
>>To the numbnuts who added "yes" and "no": Fuck off.
> No, YOU fuck off!
You make an interesting point.. or you would, if the purpose of tags were to answer arbitrary and pointless questions posted in the summary. The purpose of tags is to aid searching. Yes and no are meaningful answers; they are not functional tags.
No clue why you got modded -1, it's a good question. Most consumer-grade routers suck.
:)
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 connection timeout time. Boom, most common router problem fixed. (No clue why no manufacturer does this... It's not like an extra 512 entries in the table really takes up that much more memory.)
It also lets you prioritize traffice, dumping BitTorrent (or whatever you choose) traffic to the lowest priority. I can run all the BitTorrent I want and never affect any games.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is not a bad idea, but not a fix for most....
People that run BitTorrents and are having performance issues is NOT always related to a generic NIC.
The fact is that most Torrent clients saturate the entire available bandwidth. So if you are running more than one computer in your house, all internet performance goes to hell on every computer because of one machine running a BitTorrent client.
This card will NOT help people like this, although it make take some of the load off the machine it is attached to. But if your internet bandwidth is STILL being saturated, your online performance is still going to suck with a BitTorrent Client active.
And as others have noted, there are OK mid range NICs out there that don't consume CPU as much as the generic cards, are in the 30-60 dollar range, and with a modern processor from the past two-three years will give you the same boost this NIC will for generic gaming performance.
And with HT and Dual Core technology becoming the norm, even this benefit is reduced considerably.
If anyone has paid attention to the changes in Vista in the network stack and audio stack, you will see a common progression. They both have adapted technology from the 360 development, and are moving toward a model that works better in a multi-core environment than having external hardware assisted technologies as was popular in XP.
In a year or so when quad cores are the basic standard, utilizing a fraction of one core to handle audio and networking is no longer going to be a performance issue, especially with this many cores sitting around waiting to be used. Even the 360 with 3 cores does rather well with pushing the audio and nic processes through one of the cores and still leaves a lot of room for gaming.
So this product is a good idea, but a very Niche product and people with older systems would be better off investing this kind of money into a new MB and CPU.
get a totally custom based solution
There are dozens of specialized Linux distributions on distrowatch designed for this purpose. Toss the disk in the old system, toss in the CD, format the drives and you're done. FreeNAS comes to mind, but I don't know if it has a BT client preinstalled.
First, keep in mind I stated:
"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."
Second, yes... Linux and other open sauce variants make this inordiantely difficult. However, imagine a world where Linux did not appear? All it would require is the passing of a few laws, orders from the certain organizations, and Windows would pass on such packets without you ever seeing them.
Of course, in such a world, perhaps NIC cards can speak to each other directly over the PCI bus? No, it's not impossible. If you control the NIC chip, you control the BIOs, you control the system bus, you control all. The level of control we're talking about, after all, is the power to dictate to computer manufacturers to do "what they are told".
Really, if you control the hardware, the software follows....
Does it run Doom?
Skip the expensive NIC and make use of that old PC.
And how much does that PC cost annually to power? Let's say it's consuming a conservative 200W. It'll take 5 hours to consume a kilowatt. Let's say you pay 12 cents/kilowatt-hour. Leave it on 24/7, multiply the daily cost out annually, and you see that that this "old PC" is a most expensive folly for something this simple. You're much better off getting a low-watt (10-20W) router, upgrading the firmware, and running your QoS there.
Da Blog
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Only morons buy a gold plated anything connector.
the correct high end connector is the solid nickel ones. but cince the drooling masses cant understand why a dull silverish connector is better than the shiny gold one with blinking lights.... Morons buy the crap from places like monster cable.
remember, when you go to a friends house, the number of gold cables and Monster branded cables shows you how incredibly stupid he is.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Dave here from Bigfoot Networks, makers of the Killer NIC. I thought I'd jump on and clarify a few points that have been raised.
1.) I can confirm that the Killer runs Linux. FN Torrent is the latest application designed to run on the card, along with FN Firewall. The Killer's OS is open and accessible for application development, and we provide an SDK on the install CD or via download to those who want to develop / port Linux apps for the Killer.
2.) We agree that setting up a stand alone Linux system would allow downloading of torrents without interfering with gaming (with QoS appliance of some type, of course), but the Killer is really designed for so much more, and for folks that may not have the technical ability or time to build such a setup. Bypassing of the Windows Network stack would also not be possible with the stand-alone approach.
Otherwise, looks like a (mostly) healthy technical discussion happening here. I'm happy to respond to any questions anyone may have, either publicly here or via email: reply@bigfootnetworks.com