Intel Network Interface card

[Geraldo8022]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833106121

Is there any reason to believe that this card would give me a faster net experience as opposed to the typical onboard LAN Realtek chipset included in many motherboards? I have been wondering about this. If you read some of the Newegg customer reviews you would conclude "yes", but I view reviews skeptically. Would there be an advantage if you were transferring files between computers over a LAN? Because it has Jumbo frames?
When I monitor speeds I get latency between 45-60. Is that dependent on the LAN chip, or does that deal with my IP and nothing I can do about it?
Thanks in advance for clearing some things up for a noob. Appreciated.

 

[ScottMac]

It is possible for one card to perform better / faster than another card at several levels.

The effect of any enhancement will depend largely on the type and quantity of traffic you are moving.

Things like checksum offloads tend to provide an overall boost to all traffic and the computer's efficiency; not huge boost, but it frees up processor time and OS processing time, so everything tends to improve a little.

Jumbo frames tend to help DB-reliant applications, since databases frequently manipulate large chunks of information in bursts. Average productivity apps generate lots of small packets (typically less than 512 bytes, frequently less than 256, VoIP hangs in at ~200 bytes) so they don't usually benefit much from jumbo frames. THe concept is that by putting more data behind fewer headers, you reduce the overhead from headers & such ... unless you have data chunks greater than 1500 bytes (standard max for Ethernet), jumbo frames won't help at all.

Advanced / server NICs also usually support "teaming" multiple ports logically bound together to appear as one channel/path/connection or multiple paths to provide redundancy and rapid failure recovery. They also tend to support 802.1p and 802.1q for QOS tagging and VLAN tagging. Teaming requires a swith that supports teh chosen teaming mode in order to work in those modes. QOS lets you establish traffic priorities, VLANs allow you to logically segregate your traffic (so perhaps you can perform / permit / deny actions, based on VLAN membership.

Where are you pinging that you get 45-60ms pings? IF that's a local network, that's a problem ... if it's on the other coast, that's pretty good. Aside from serialization and transmission times, latency is purely a function of congestion.

 

[Geraldo8022]

Latency to server to NetAccess of Parsipanny NJ is always round 43-45 and to Sprint Chicago the same. Sprint Texas and LinkLine of Los Angeles around 60-63. I am near Seattle on Embarq DSL. I test at dslreports.com
I am only concerned with ordinary net traffic.

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: Geraldo8022
Latency to server to NetAccess of Parsipanny NJ is always round 43-45 and to Sprint Chicago the same. Sprint Texas and LinkLine of Los Angeles around 60-63. I am near Seattle on Embarq DSL. I test at dslreports.com
I am only concerned with ordinary net traffic.

these figures come from carrier routing / latency across the internet, for the most part there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[JackMDS]

I have very fast Broadband connection.

This is a trace from my computer through a Router to a fast Server.

http://www.ezlan.net/network/trace.jpg

The computer that generates the Trace uses Onboard Realtek NIC.

As you can see the "Lag" generated by my computer (from the computer to the Buffalo Router). is practically Zero.