Intel NIC (Network interface controller) vs Killer E2200

[remixedcat]

I'd love to do a review on it but since they don'tdo aadd on cards anymore it would be tough

 

[Aquinus]

I would like to see how the fancy 8 core Atom C2750 and it's 4 ethernet PHYs built into the CPU would fare up against other adapters. I wouldn't be surprised if the SoC approach for high-speed networking would be comparable to what's available as an add-on card.

 

[cadaveca]

Suppose I am playing an online game while torrenting in the background. Will KillerNIC perform better than the competition in such scenario? I have not seen anyone testing under such scenario, perhaps I have not read all reviews.

KillerNic will help you, CFOS on Intel can too, but requires manual settings.

KillerNIC is ready for torrents and gaming..or streaming and gaming...without you having to do anything. That's why I like them.

Intel is more capable, and can offer the same if not better with CFOS...but you have to set it up manually.

 

[R-T-B]

It's less CPU utilization that gives Intel the edge, really.

No. Unless I'm wrong, the killer NICS implement the complete TCP/IP stack in hardware as opposed to a software stack in windows, theoretically lowering CPU usage vs any other NIC.

However, unless you are running a 486, this won't be noticable.

 

[eidairaman1]

I did a test with a standard intel gigabit nic card and a Killer nic. After countless ping tests, gaming sessions, and lan speed tests our results showed they do not offer anything more than a cool name. Tested off a 500MB Symmetrical connection.

Yeah copper in ground or aerial- how old or new that copper is. Other interference...

 

[Mussels]

There are some poopy Intel controllers.

Anyway, a result from another site(not my results):

You have to list specific controller models rather than state general performance metrics with just a brand name, IMHO, so take this result with a grain of salt. You could also say that this might be highly workload dependent. At the same time, if you are someone that STREAMS their gameplay, the kIllerNic software will do you a favor, for sure. At the same time, boards with Intel NICs that have the CFOS software can do the same...but you need to know how to tune the software, FIRST.

^ those tests are done while hammering the network on that PC with torrents and file transfers. again with the fact this ONLY applies if the cause of high ping and lag was on the PC with the killer NIC card - if your NAS was causing the issues uploading to your brother while he was streaming video over 4G to his phone, or your sister was uploading selfies to facebook... well, you're screwed.

Suppose I am playing an online game while torrenting in the background. Will KillerNIC perform better than the competition in such scenario? I have not seen anyone testing under such scenario, perhaps I have not read all reviews.

yes, but its the software that does it, not the hardware. it will also only work if the torrents are being ran from that specific PC, as i stated above. you need to be running unusual amounts of traffic to run into a situation it helps.

 

[cadaveca]

^ those tests are done while hammering the network on that PC with torrents and file transfers. again with the fact this ONLY applies if the cause of high ping and lag was on the PC with the killer NIC card - if your NAS was causing the issues uploading to your brother while he was streaming video over 4G to his phone, or your sister was uploading selfies to facebook... well, you're screwed.

You bet. And an Intel NIC isn't going to fix that. But...should all those device run CFOS software...it might. It's at least intelligent enough to let you prioritize network traffic across all your PCs, so you can make sure your traffic on your PC goes through and everyone else gets the problems.

 

[vega22]

Suppose I am playing an online game while torrenting in the background. Will KillerNIC perform better than the competition in such scenario? I have not seen anyone testing under such scenario, perhaps I have not read all reviews.

yes.

out the box it is setup to prioritize games above torrent clients.

i love this debate me, tends to be lots of people saying they are great i have one. or they are shit, i heard.

i got one for a laugh to see what it was like and in some games the difference is night and day (without torrents running). i would hate to play bf52 or cod75 without it. some games i can't tell the differnce like cs or tf at all.

with torrents running, well some games you can't even stay connected, with the killer you do not even know it is running.

if you have 1 box for all your needs then the killer is almost a no brainer, if you have a games machine and a torrent box then i would only if you played some laggy console ports

 

[OneMoar]

QoS has no place on residential connections killernic's are overpriced junk in my book

 

[remixedcat]

QoS has no place on residential connections killernic's are overpriced junk in my book

QoS definitly does on residential connections. Why should someone's netflix binge get in the way of work or there might be a steam download making my streaming buffer like mad or something...

QoS is best served being put on the router and not the adapter.

 

[Aquinus]

QoS has no place on residential connections killernic's are overpriced junk in my book

I agree with @remixedcat one this one. QoS definitely has a place in a residential network in some cases but usually only on the gateway itself.

If you have VoIP for your voice communication you'll want QoS to prioritize VoIP packets. Unlike a regular download, VoIP and other streaming data services usually demand a fairly low level of latency. As a result, QoS can be used to ensure that VoIP gets priority over other tasks. It's just a matter of figuring out what traffic is important because I don't want to be dropped from a call because my wife decided to start up a torrent at the same time that my daughter is watching some 1080p video off Netflix. While I doubt this would impact my 119Mbit connection, it would have back when I had 25Mbit down instead.

So there are really two cases where QoS is important. When an application requires at least some level of bandwidth and when an application requires at least some maximum level of latency. All in all, there are reasons why traffic would need to be QoS'ed or shaped. They're not as common in residential configurations, but they might be required depending on what it is being used for and the performance/reliability that they customer is getting.

A great example is VoIP over satellite internet. Satellite already has a really high latency, almost too high for VoIP out of the box, so you need to make sure that those packets are the first things to go out when they come in and to not wait on other things. So while QoS might not be important for you it might mean a whole lot more to someone else who might actually need it.

 

[remixedcat]

My Meraki Z1 takes QoS a step further and even defines by user group policies that are configured to seperate VLANs so each VLAN has unique traffic shaping and fitlering policies as well!!

I can also do it by user as well thru the clients status screen. I can pick any user on the client status screen and give them their seperate policy/qos/everything.

 

[Jetster]

Normally I would always use the Intel nic but this time Ive ben using the Killer E2200. I have no complaints at all

 

[remixedcat]

Normally I would always use the Intel nic but this time Ive ben using the Killer E2200. I have no complaints at all

try it with hyper-v or vmware and let us know if it works!!!

 

[Aquinus]

My Meraki Z1 takes QoS a step further and even defines by user group policies that are configured to seperate VLANs so each VLAN has unique traffic shaping and fitlering policies as well!!

View attachment 59140

I can also do it by user as well thru the clients status screen. I can pick any user on the client status screen and give them their seperate policy/qos/everything.

View attachment 59141

While Meraki makes this easy, this is all achievable with a Linux router as long as you're willing to get your hands (very) dirty in the terminal which is what I do. Also my Gateway has two RTL8111 and two Intel 82571EBs and you wouldn't notice a difference between the two. In fact using just the Realtek adapters versus just the Intel adapters doesn't feel any different. Just felt that was worth mentioning.

If you're on Cable internet, the delay from HFC alone makes any benefit of the adapter worthless IMHO as well. It seems to me to be a normal dedicated NIC with some performance customizations in the driver. To me, that's pretty lame and isn't a good selling point when an adapter for a fraction of the price could give you two or four ports instead of one and the same thing.

If you really want to invest in more bandwidth, go 10Gbps on CAT6. If you need less latency locally, then put fiber between you and your gateway... and as many have noticed, real solutions for faster networking are expensive, not just a hundred USD but hundreds of USD.

With that all said, one of these days, I want to run 10Gbps in my house. The goal would be to get my RAID off my tower while preserving bandwidth and latency, not just 130MB/s (~1Gbps) via iSCSI or something. That would be the second step, first would be a RAID card, two more 1TB drives to make RAID-6 a little more feasible.

Also for Ethernet, I would suspect something like the Intel X540-T1 would be the optimal choice. Not only is it top of the line, you're ready for 10Gbps when you want it, but once again, over 300 USD later, it's what you get.

 

[eidairaman1]

QoS definitly does on residential connections. Why should someone's netflix binge get in the way of work or there might be a steam download making my streaming buffer like mad or something...

QoS is best served being put on the router and not the adapter.

it helps prioritize who needs the most bandwidth at that time

 

[Mussels]

I agree with @remixedcat one this one. QoS definitely has a place in a residential network in some cases but usually only on the gateway itself.

If you have VoIP for your voice communication you'll want QoS to prioritize VoIP packets. Unlike a regular download, VoIP and other streaming data services usually demand a fairly low level of latency. As a result, QoS can be used to ensure that VoIP gets priority over other tasks. It's just a matter of figuring out what traffic is important because I don't want to be dropped from a call because my wife decided to start up a torrent at the same time that my daughter is watching some 1080p video off Netflix. While I doubt this would impact my 119Mbit connection, it would have back when I had 25Mbit down instead.

So there are really two cases where QoS is important. When an application requires at least some level of bandwidth and when an application requires at least some maximum level of latency. All in all, there are reasons why traffic would need to be QoS'ed or shaped. They're not as common in residential configurations, but they might be required depending on what it is being used for and the performance/reliability that they customer is getting.

A great example is VoIP over satellite internet. Satellite already has a really high latency, almost too high for VoIP out of the box, so you need to make sure that those packets are the first things to go out when they come in and to not wait on other things. So while QoS might not be important for you it might mean a whole lot more to someone else who might actually need it.

i got 6Mb down, 0.8Mb up - so trust me, i go a little beyond QoS and into full bandwidth management on my router, or simply uploading a photo will cause lag spikes for voip and gaming.

DHCP assigns them pre-set IP's by me, with guests ending up in that speed crippled pool.

(missus stuff, my stuff, guests/unassigned)

 

[remixedcat]

I only got 3Mbps upload speed but 50Mbps down speed so I got to QoS as well.

 

[OneMoar]

QOS requires a "fast" connection the avg 20/2 or even 25/5 cable line is not gonna work QOS has to much overhead that 10% you need to reserve for QOS to be effective will mean the difference between a smooth vidoe/gaming experience and in most causes will have negative effects for everyone now if you have 100Mbit/s fiber connection thats another story
edit: god dam it mussels beat me to it
and yes I am aware with a ton of fiddling around with limits and the scheduler you can make it work but its just not worth it for the tiny bit of gain residential != datacenter

 

[remixedcat]

The "overhead" will depend on how fast the router's CPU speed is.

Mines 600Mhz in my Z1 and if you go to http://wikidevi.com you can find out the processor speeds/ram/soc/etc of your router!
My router: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Meraki_Z1 My APs: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Aruba_Networks_RAP-109 / https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Meraki_MR12

BTW I only throttle my guests down and anyone else connected to VLAN3 my main VLAN has no throttling.

 

[OneMoar]

The "overhead" will depend on how fast the router's CPU speed is.

Mines 600Mhz in my Z1 and if you go to http://wikidevi.com you can find out the processor speeds/ram/soc/etc of your router!
My router: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Meraki_Z1 My APs: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Aruba_Networks_RAP-109 / https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Meraki_MR12

BTW I only throttle my guests down and anyone else connected to VLAN3 my main VLAN has no throttling.

the overhead I was talking about was the amount of bandwidth you need to reserve on the WAN side to ensure it works correctly
if I have a 20MBit connection and I take 10% away from that now its only 18Mbit witch if you have multiple high bandwidth users such as video streaming combined with gaming is BADDD mojo
btw my `cpu` on my router is running at 662mhz

 

[Mussels]

it was windows XP that had that 10% overhead, and it wasnt always on like people thought. lots of common misconceptions there.


and yeah router processing power matters a lot, a cheap router can have LAN transfers can slow down WAN (internet) traffic, especially with wifi.


my budget router, since the kitty above linked to the site.

 

[OneMoar]

it was windows XP that had that 10% overhead, and it wasnt always on like people thought. lots of common misconceptions there.


and yeah router processing power matters a lot, a cheap router can have LAN transfers can slow down WAN (internet) traffic, especially with wifi.

no when you setup QOS you are asked to input your line speeds and because QOS needs some wiggle room you need to input a speed roughly 10 to 20% lower then your measured max on speed test or QOS will not work correctly its CRITCAL that you do so meaning that your connection is now capped to about 90% of its functional-max this is universal and applies to every QOS implementation ever!
if you are on a fiber or a docsis 3 connection that ten-precent lose in pure throughput ins't a issue
now if you have a terrible up load speed like most residential connections then that 10% is gonna kill you

witch if your limits aren't set correctly @Mussles is why you are getting lag because you are allocating more bandwidth then you really have

 

[Mussels]

no when you setup QOS you are asked to input your line speeds and because QOS needs some wiggle room you need to input a speed roughly 10 to 20% lower then your measured max on speed test or QOS will not work correctly its CRITCAL that you do so meaning that your connection is now capped to about 90% of its functional-max this is universal and applies to every QOS implementation ever!
if you are on a fiber or a docsis 3 connection that ten-precent lose in pure throughput ins't a issue

witch if your limits aren't set correctly @Mussles is why you are getting lag because you are allocating more bandwidth then you really have

mines set fine, the lag is if i dont have limits set. i account for overheads and usage, but mine is not QoS - its bandwidth allocation, so the 10% reservation does not apply.

 

[remixedcat]

it was windows XP that had that 10% overhead, and it wasnt always on like people thought. lots of common misconceptions there.


and yeah router processing power matters a lot, a cheap router can have LAN transfers can slow down WAN (internet) traffic, especially with wifi.


my budget router, since the kitty above linked to the site.

Ha! Your's has the same SoC as my Z1!!! LOL That's creepy (lower FLA count tho