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Network Card for Gamers - Uses Linux to Reduce Lag
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Aug 08, 2006 04:22 PM
from the slave-to-the-ping-number dept.
from the slave-to-the-ping-number dept.
Cujo writes "The folks at GDHardare have an interview with Bigfoot Networks discussing the pending release of their Killer Network Card which is said to greatly reduce in-game latency. According to the Interview, this card uses a Linux-based subsystem to do its magic."
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Games: Killer NIC Hands-On Testing 134 comments
basscomm writes "IGN has gotten their hands on the 'Killer' NIC recently mentioned here on Slashdot and have written a two part article detailing their impressions: 'The performance boost we got out of the Killer NIC in this testing exceeds Bigfoot Networks' own claims of 10-15% gains by a long shot and certainly seems to validate the potential of the technology. We suspect, however, that the fact that these computers were marginal at running F.E.A.R. in the first place had an impact in the comparison. In many cases the non-Killer NIC machine became absolutely bogged down as particles flew and grenades exploded, enough so that the entire machine would hang for a moment as things got sorted out. Obviously this murdered average fps figures.'"
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Is it credible? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh - and it runs FNapps, so as well as being good for games, its suitable for FNapping.
Re:Is it credible? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Is it credible? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Powered by Lag and Latency Reduction (LLR) Technology"
"Future-Proof: Field Upgradeable"
"UltimatePing(tm)"
"MaxFPS(tm)"
"FNA(tm)"
"GameFirst(tm)"
"PingThrottle(tm)"
Seriously, who else but a marketting department would think that it's a good idea to trademark a name describing everything "new" that your product does? And the page is so full of TLAs (three letter acronyms) that you need a glossary to read it.
So, yes, I'd have to weigh in with everyone else, it's snakeoil. Basically, any product designed entirely by a marketting group is going to be snakeoil, and this definitely was.
Parent
Ted Stevens and I believe the card works (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows the internets is a series of tubes. Well, this card hurls your data through the tubes with such force that it can't possibly get stuck.
Make sure not to point the jack at anyone. You'll shoot someone's eye out.
Parent
Re:Ted Stevens and I believe the card works (Score:5, Funny)
Okay that's it, I officially declare the 'internet is a series of tubes' reference not funny any more.
Thank you.
Parent
Re:Ted Stevens and I believe the card works (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, to be honest, of all the things said during that horrid speech, that was the most accurage. tubes/pipes, WTF is the difference?
Parent
Re:Ted Stevens and I believe the card works (Score:4, Funny)
Okay that's it, I officially declare the 'internet is a series of tubes' reference not funny any more.
Thank you.
Sure Schemat1c, but not everyone reads Slashdot... could you send out an Internet to everyone about this ?
Parent
Re:Is it credible? (Score:5, Insightful)
IE see the ALOHA protocol...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_protocol#The_A
Changing the way that the network card responded so that rather than using a random backoff time it just retried staight away would decrease the network latency but if there were several of the cards on the network all trying to do the same thing the network would grind to a halt...
There are alot of protocols with backoffs etc which could be changed to improve the individuals connection but making them faster would be a BAD THING for the network as a whole!
but, there are also other things which could be done to improve network connectivity without hurting the network as a whole... just setting up some kind of QoS on the network card so that small packets like ping response would always get pushed to the front of the queue would improve the ping time signifigantly under non-idle situations...
Parent
Where is the Disadvantage???? (Score:4, Funny)
That sounds like killing two birds with one stone....
1) Decrease my latency
2) Increase the latency of everyone else, including the snipers in CS
This could be a gamer's paradise... It will be infinite successful.
OTOH if it doesn't work, then it makes a great gift for a `friend'.
Parent
Re:It gets better (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire processing required to transform a hunk of data into a UDP packet consists of prepending a 6-byte header to the thing, containing the source port, the destination port, and 16 bits of zeroes... not exactly the sort of thing that requires immense processing power. Unlike TCP, UDP doesn't synchronize anything, doesn't reorder anything, and doesn't acknowledge receipt of packets.
How much of your processing power is ever occupied by the network card when playing a game??? Or when doing anything else for that matter. I can have several hundred bittorrent connections running on my computer, with a total transfer rate of hundreds of KiB/s, all kinds of checksumming and I/O overhead, and it still makes a 1 or 2 percent blip on CPU usage... unless a network card can magically construct a LAN between two computers at a distance, it's not going to affect latency in network gaming.
Parent
Re:Is it credible? Of course not (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Overloaded and slow routers will say, "Whoah, his network card RUNS LINUX. I'll shuffle these packets through more quickly."
I'd believe their hype more if we already had an openly tiered internet and these guys gave you a free year's subcription to the top tier with purchase of the card.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that shows the founders don't know that much about networking?
Tom
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said, I cant see how this network card could reduce your latency by more than 1ms or 2ms round trip. Latency isnt introduced because your PC is stupid, its introduced because you're waiting the time it takes for packets to travel to your ISP, to its ISP, to its ISP, down to its child, down to its child, and back to some other PC, and having to interact with the 20 routers, gateways, and switches along the way. Most switches use something called Hold and Forward (I might have the name wrong...) which listens for the whole packet, reads the header information, and then passes it along, rather than writing the bits as they come in like a hub does... (Please dont read into this and think hubs are better
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
First you have to wrap head around one important factor that can absolutely kill latency for any transport with guaranteed delivery -- packet loss. Packet loss means you have to discover what packets were lost and then retransmit them - those two steps can easily introduce delays on the order of seconds.
So one trick would be to pre-send the retransmits. Send duplicate packets spaced apart by a few miliseconds. If the other end receives multiple copies of the same packet, it will silently discard any extras - but if one copy gets lost en route, the other packet might still make it through, thus eliminating the whole timeout/retransmit cycle. It should be possible to do this for both TCP and UDP.
However, doing something like that is very unfriendly because it wastes resources. The primary reason packets get lost en route is because of bandwidth saturation. So, if you double or triple your traffic you are just making the problem worse. If you are the only one out of thousands who "breaks the rules" you will probably get away with it and probably even benefit from it since packet loss will be a somewhat even distribution among all traffic, so chances are if one of your packets gets dropped the copy won't get dropped - instead someone else's packet gets dropped.
But if a significant minority of users were to do the same thing, it would probably result in a complete collapse of any usuable bandwidth. Which is exactly the kind of thing I would expect a bunch of MBA's to come up with.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a 3com NIC and be done with it. I've seen a machine getting pings of 200 to 300 and when I switched the crap card to a real 3com the ping times went down to 50.There is a reason that 3com charges $35 for their cards... they work well. I use them exclusively in my network.
Shitty hardware always causes problems.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet others defend this weak, limp wristed marketing gimmick and have been modded up.
Is there no justice on slashdot!? Have the Mod gods forsaken us for the last time!?
We pray to you mod gods, remove the blight from the parent post and restore the balance of good and newb on slashdot!
Parent
Pricey (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pricey (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you really reprioritize your packets coming from your desktop in such a way that you make a significant gain after it hits your ISP? Or is this just cyberpenis enlargement? Seems to me that, unless you're hosting a bunch of internet spyware or network-heavy background processes, you're not going to be making much of a gain.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Uh, this is for gamers, right? Don't most gamers run WINDOWS?
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, maybe I'm completely misunderstanding teh point of this NIC, but...
You are correct. The NIC isn't an appreciable source of latency. Right now, I ping'd a server on another subnet, and I averaged 0.3 ms latency. This is bog standard 100 Mb. Nothing the least bit fancy. That server might have a nice NIC of some sort, but this desktop certainly doesn't. And, that's hopping between subnets. Crossing between buildings over a T-1, with a few routers involved in about 5 ms. Pinging my home machine over the internet is abou 150 ms. So, assuming that of the
Now, assuming that I was playing a game with my home computer, moving to a NIC that cut the latency of my PC down by 2/3 (from
Which would improve my lag by
No, dammit. You won't see a noticeable improvement from a lower latency NIC. There are probably a few microbenchmarks where you will get a phenomenal speedup. Gaming isn't one of those cases.
Parent
Klingons on the starboard bow! (Score:4, Funny)
Oooo... Killer (Score:5, Funny)
"This NIC is so hardcore it KILLED SOMEONE!"
I can just imagine their second version coming with a muzzle a la Silence of the Lambs.
Re:Oooo... Killer (Score:5, Funny)
And some VTEC stickers and a big-ass wing on it.
Yeah, that'd be phat, yo!
Pimp my NIC, bitches!
Parent
network card lag? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this really needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=255
Assuming this product entirely eliminates all latency on the first hop (impossible), that's a net gain of 1ms.
The entire concept of these FNApps also strikes me as a route to evil; I heard a subtext of "Now, even the most clueless Windows gamer with too much money can run packet scanning cheating tools with no chance of detection!".
I'm placing this one firmly in the "Snake oil" bin, based on this interview.
Retarded, (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's a QoS Network Card? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, considering I get sub-1ms latencies across my network (only 100Mbps...), and this is with some rather pathetic equipment (Celeron system running Win2k), I fail to see how I can improve my 80ms ping with a better network card.
It seems that hardcore gamers are starting to become the computing equivalent of the "audiophile". From CRT displays that do 120hz refresh (do they notice the difference between 100 and 120, I wonder?) since LCDs that do 6ms are "too slow". Gaming mice that do 10k-dpi for ultra-precise positioning, videocards that cost the better part of a grand. And now, network cards that cut down microseconds or give you that extra frame per second. There's also keyboards, the gaming mousepad (though, some are nice for general use), and god knows what other accessories, doodads and other monster-cable-type things.
Re:So it's a QoS Network Card? (Score:5, Interesting)
(For anyone who doesn't frequent the same shops as crazy people, it is common to gold-plate the connectors of analogue audio connectors to improve the quality of the signal. Presumably the untarnishable gold reduces the resistance of the connection. This gets taken to rather silly extremes when gold-plated 3.5mm connectors are marketed for use with low-quality stuff like MP3 players.)
Parent
Re:So it's a QoS Network Card? (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from $30,000 speaker cables (I shit you not), my most favorite audiophile product is a wooden knob that costs $500. "What does the wooden knob do, though?" Well, nothing on its own. It is in fact, a wooden knob. A knob made from wood. It sounds great when attached to your volume pot, though. Five hundred dollars please.
So today we learn about a network card that somehow reduces lag by implementing hardcore quality of service on an endpoint that is for all intents and purposes dedicated to a single application. Are gamers analogous to audiophiles? "Quake III is a lot more responsive now. My ping is about the same, but I can feel the difference." It must work though. I mean, who would make something and charge so much for it if it didn't actually work?
Parent
I think you are making some invalid comparisions (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise the mouse thing is a little misinformed. Higher DPI cameras isn't worthless on an optical mouse. It lets it track on more uniform surfaces. No matter how uniform something looks, at some point it's uneven. Well, optical mice need uneveness to track, that's why they don't work on a mirror, or a really smooth surface, they can't track details. One way to make them track better is to up the DPI. The smaller details they see, the more uniform a surface can be. That's also the point behind using a laser. Since it is truly monochromatic light, just one frequency, it shows small details in a starker contrast that is lost with normal LED light.
Though there's certianly BS targeted at the gamer market, this being some of the BS, there's plenty of products with real legit reasons to be bought. Not everyone wants an experience that is "acceptable" or "works jsut good enough to get the job done." Doesn't mean they are wasting money on the things they buy. Yes a $50 used mountain bike will get me to work and back, but that doesn't mean that I'm wasting money on a deceant $600 street bike. It honestly does work better.
Parent
It must be good !! (Score:5, Funny)
The telling comment at the end (Score:5, Insightful)
That says all that needs to be said for the article.
I've said it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
This, of course, was covered earlier [slashdot.org]. And I still agree with the tag - I think it is snake oil.
Let's try and remember a few fundamentals. As per RFC 1925, "The 12 Networking Truths": [faqs.org]
(Déja vu? Yes! [slashdot.org])
Right on. This card might process incoming data quicker, or perhaps even send the data to the CPU faster, but it won't reduce latency. The high price ($280? TFA is not responding) does not justify the alleged 'improvements' in lag this card offers. Games communicating over UDP like BF2 have fairly low lag anyway (when they stay connected...). As others have said: spend the money on RAM or some other upgrade. The 'lag' improvement will be much more cost-effective.Big laffs! (Score:3, Funny)
Of all the things a spiffy network card could do, reducing latency is just about the least likely.
They could have put 20mb of buffers on it.
They could buy glow-in-the-dark pc board material.
They could have put a handful of bright blinky led's on it.
They could even put on a 12AX7 vacuum tube to do something useful.
They could put built-in auto ping.
But what do they do? Put another layer of OS glop in the way. Big laffs!!
What a waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the tech equivalent of herbal viagra.
Wow. Just wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, I thought gamers were suckers (paying $600+ for graphics cards) but really.
A $280 network card.
But wait, there's more!
It's also... a Linux box. And not just a Linux box, an "Open Source Linux" box.
Plus it has USB so you can connect a hard drive or headset???
OK, the basic idea is interesting. Offload all the TCP/UDP/IP processing. I have to wonder how much impact that would really have. But how does the data get onto the host computer? If it's via a driver that shows up as a NIC, then it still has to go through the network layers of the OS. If it shows up as some kind of memory, then the host applications must be written to use it. The idea of offloading a few other features too (like voice chat) is nice too, but again, you'd have to write special software or drivers or something on the host OS to use that.
And you can use it for a hard drive. If they open it, background bittorrent anyone?
Or you could just let your NIC have a hard drive for fun that you can't access. Genius!
Look, if they had a little ARM processor and it did the network stuff only, that would be cute. But I think they over built it, it's over priced, and I seriously doubt it has much impact.
I wonder if they'll make Linux drivers available *smirk*
And at this point I would like to announce: (Score:5, Funny)
Killer IO-APIC!
Stay alert, kids, because we'll soon be announcing Killer Keyboard Controller with Bitchin' Gate A20 Technology!
Pwn!
w00t!
Tytus (Bigfoot Networks) Responds (Score:5, Informative)
Two reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
#2. It's another chip. Software is far cheaper than hardware for OEM's.
Parent
Re:drivers on cards? (Score:3, Interesting)
a) ROM code implies adopting some sort of code execution (ISA dependant, p.e. x86/PPC/MIPS/etc), CPU related.
b) There are also dependencies related to the system BOOT process (p.e. IBM-PC / EFI BIOS / Other), i.e. related to the boot "protocol", CPU unrelated.
b) Ignoring (a) and (b) problems, having 9x/xp/*nx drivers built-in in ROM just as backup for your media, note that the BIOS chip is nowdays quite more expensive than the 0.20$ that costs the driver CD, or the ~
Re:Oh, Geeky! (Score:3, Informative)