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  • The_Assimilator - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    If you want your machine's stability killed, buy this product. If you want a NIC that actually works, buy Intel.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    I'm a huge fan of Intel NICs, but you're going to have to explain your reasoning to us sheeple.
  • Shadow7037932 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Drivers can be unstable and sometimes causes "No Internet Access" issues despite being connected. Gotta disable then re enable to get it to work again.
  • Klimax - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Last I saw such thing was with older Atheros drivers as used on ASUS mainboards for Core 2. (P5KPL-E) Made transfers of large files impossible.
  • Stan11003 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Ditto, I had nothing but problems on my MSI build until I disabled the bundled killer nic and went Intel.
  • wujj123456 - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Exactly. I had E2201 on my Z87 G1 Sniper 5. With their driver is installed, it's giving me BSOD twice a day. After I uninstalled the driver and making it an "unrecognized device" in device manager, my system has never BSOD'ed once. I gave it another try when I upgraded to Windows 8 and it's same crap even after Windows 8 was released for at least a year. If my MB only had that single LAN port I would be doomed, but thankfully there is also an Intel I-217V.

    I am never going to buy a MB with only Killer Ethernet. I actually doubt if I would ever want to try again. What they are doing seems to be something should be done at router level. It won't solve any problem in a shared network, which is most network environment anyway.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    E2201 is two/three generations old at this point, back when it was still a Qualcomm brand. Since then it's been redesigned and a new software team with user input. For sure I'm going to try it out my side as well when it gets here, but 'under new management' is a big banner they're putting on this generation.
  • wujj123456 - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    I certainly hope so, but definitely won't run the risk of buying a MB with only killer ports. I am not sure how much "brand" plays a role here. I remember QC acquired the brand along with its team back then. If it's really a mostly new team with new management, I can't help but wonder what happened before/after acquisition and what they were doing for all the years...

    Also Intel cards work out of box for Linux, and there were noLinux driver (open-source or proprietary) at all to make it work under Linux. (It's probably still the case?) Not really holding breath for Linux side of things though.
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    It's pretty clear from comments here that opinions about Killer NICs are resoundingly negative. I've seen that evidence elsewhere as Killer NICs are regarded poorly in product reviews. Of the few benchmarks I've looked at, benefits (if they really existed at all in prior products) are close to or within a reasonable margin of error when compared to other competing network adapters. That stands to reason, of course, because the network adapter has no control over data packets once they're placed on the wire. After that point, latency, transmission priority, and so forth are controlled by other equipment that is outside of the end user's reach.

    In my opinion, the negative branding perception is caused by two factors. The first is the problem of the NIC's lack of reach into the network as explained above. The second is a perception of poor quality as articulated by people retelling problems they've had with drivers and software. Having changed hands multiple times (Bigfoot, Qualcomm, and now Rivet) doesn't exactly help that brand image because it makes the product look like an unwanted orphan with little market appeal -- something that's clearly and obviously true based on the response this article's gotten.

    Since Rivet Networks consists of leftovers from Bigfoot Networks, a company that already failed to build a successful product once before, those same people will need to have learned a lot from their prior mistakes if they intend to survive. People, right or wrong, have long memories over being burned by a particular brand in the past. Even with expert execution, I don't see how a premium network adapter brand will ultimately find success under the conditions Rivet is working with. Ultimately, Rivet is still _just_ a spinoff company of Qualcomm which makes one think the fruit of the new company hasn't fallen very far from the mother tree. Buying anything with a Killer NIC in it is a risky venture for the buyer since the new company is unproven which might leave someone stuck with an unsupported, non-functional adapter that's been abandoned by a now dead business entity.

    Having said all that, it's clear that you have reasons for coming to Rivet Networks' defence even if we're not privy to your motives (nor should it matter). I think the majority of us, in spite of our present opinions, are willing to entertain a product review. If the E2500 can demonstrate some measurable benefit, perhaps it has a chance.

    As most of us are skeptical of vendor claims, bitter and angry over the direction the industry has gone in the past few years, and just want a product that works, we'll have to see the usefulness of a Killer NIC played out in numbers before any of us are going to even consider one. Well, in my case, I'd have to see numbers AND Linux support or its a non-starter regardless.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    I agree with you. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, given the ups and downs over the past few years, and I'm waiting to put it through a set of relevant tests with the appropriate competition. I've met the engineers, and the VPs, since the spinout - and they understand a lot of user concerns. They're also clearly smart and passionate guys, so I'm not willing to write them off just yet until I get the product in my hands and it goes through the ringer.
  • rhysiam - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    So let me get this straight, their "doubleshot-pro" feature as outlined in their slide seamlessly sends high priority internet traffic over ethernet, while diverting "less urgent" Internet traffic to the wifi, thus offering better performance for those who have the sole use of a 2Gbps Internet connection, while being utterly and completely pointless for the remaining 99.9% of us. Thanks Killer!
  • IdBuRnS - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Yea, I have a 50/50 FiOS connection. How is this NIC going to deliver me speeds that exceed that? Oh yea, it can't...

    Prioritizing traffic is one thing, but who cares if a NIC can handle 1GB/s of internet traffic if you're already limited by your internet connection?
  • BrokenCrayons - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    That was sort of my thoughts on the matter. I'm in a rural area and I have one ISP offering DSL at a maximum speed of 12 mbps. Beyond that little dirt trail I use to get to the outside world, there are who knows how many routers owned by who knows how many apathetic companies that will handle packets I'm sending or receiving with zero priority over other traffic. It doesn't seem like any local network adapter will offer measurable benefits for traffic leaving my home network.
  • rhysiam - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Totally. It seems similar logic to repaving your driveway in order to reduce your daily rush-hour commute. At least I know there will be no congestion on my own driveway... because that's the problem!

    I wouldn't mind Killer products if they offered better non-Windows support. I suspect I'm not the only one who likes the option of my re-purposing rigs after they're retired from daily-driver use. Maybe things have changed, but last I looked into it, getting any Killer networking products working as a basic NIC on most linux or FreeBSD platforms was a bit of a nightmare. For that reason alone any product with a Killer NIC is off my purchase list immediately.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    If you had 50 cars all trying to get out of the driveway at once, but the ambulance at the back needed priority, it'd jump the queue. Same thing with getting on a busy train platform but arriving when you're at the back, but with a high priority pass you don't need to bother the station manager (CPU) to get one, everyone in the queue knows to let you past. Sure, the trip out on the train is the main time of the journey, but you don't have to wait for the 3/4/5/6th train to go by to get on one.
  • Klimax - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    For solution to make sense, you need either very weak computer or masive bandwidth in use. (gigabite or bigger) And even then it would be easier to just use Intel NIC.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Define easier?
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Yes, no Linux support is a killer (pun intended) for me as well.
  • LostWander - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Home networks that frequently work with large (huge) files were the only other use case I could think of. So still pointless for 99.8% of us
  • Klimax - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Not even those. You have to really saturate NIC with packets to see something.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    I can`t help but chuckle at the amount of KILLER in those slides.
  • zodiacfml - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Aside from the NIC, they should have built a Wi-Fi router and put all their expertise on it to realize the benefits. For example, setting QoS for gaming is not user friendly for most routers. The NIC features are rendered useless when one from the house starts doing something e.g. streaming, torrents.
  • Phasenoise - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    That's what I was thinking. If all it does is classify things on your own PC, it's not very useful. To get best gaming ping I do what everyone does (killer nic or not) - I don't download stuff while gaming.

    The remaining obstacle is to handle the whole house's traffic. Existing solutions have either primitive QoS or generally awful UIs. Tackling THAT problem in a consumer router would actually be interesting.
  • Daniel Egger - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    True. QoS always needs to be applied where the queues are and thus the congestion happens, i.e. at your router at home (preferably at the provider end, too, since your router can only address outgoing packets...). The only non-BS product I can see here would be a Killer router...

    But who knows, maybe they have a few Killer tricks up their sleeves like ARP poisoning to take over the control of the complete LAN traffic and hence ensure that they can fully prioritise all packets going upstream...
  • bcronce - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    There has been recent AQMs that make my quality incredibly simple to implement. While I use HFSC, which is much more complicated, there are Fair Queuing AQMs like fq_Codel and fq_RED that only need to know how much bandwidth you have. That it is, no other configuration that setting your bandwidth. You'll never need to worry about high pings, packetloss, or something hogging bandwidth ever again, except for very slow connections.

    There is an in-progress AQM+Shaper called cake that is being worked on. It takes fq_Codel to the next level and will make even low speed connections below 1Mb have "low latency" within reason. While it still has issues, mainly because of the kitchen sink they're trying to install, they had it where it perfectly dynamically distributed bandwidth while isolating latency among all network flows. Again, just set the bandwidth, no other configuration.

    We are very close to having nearly zero-config low latency traffic shaping. This only helps the users link to their ISP. If the ISP cannot supply reliable bandwidth, you will still have issues. This configuration doe assume that the bandwidth you supply is available.
  • cuex - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    In fact, they actually have it, called Streamboost. The latest Router I know have it is TrendNet TED 824DRU. Streamboost actually WORKS in prioritizing Gaming packet.

    From all the comments I read here, seems I am the only one happy and have positive experience using Killer NIC (have used it for 3 years).
  • Phasenoise - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    The DoubleShot Pro slide is missing the last part where both of those big pipes go right back to the string and cans that is your internet connection.

    So you split it up to... combine it again on a device which probably doesn't have great QoS features.
  • bcronce - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    I just use an AQM+HFSC to keep my games with sub 1ms of additional latency while allowing YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Torrent, etc to max out my connection. A few weeks back I had Torrent downloading and uploading max speed while Steam was downloading a 60GiB game. My connection was running at 99% of its rated speed with zero dips for a few hours with over 10,000 established connections, and my ping stayed a flat 1.5ms+-0.3ms to my ISP.

    Looking at my ping/latency graph, it's nearly impossible to tell when I'm maxing out the connection, and it is precise down to 0.01ms.
  • Lolimaster - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Blablablabla, it all depends if you have a shi*tty ISP with bad routing, nat3 or a decent one.
  • benzosaurus - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    The question (as always with this company) is: is any of this work in any way detectable to the user experience?
  • Lolimaster - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    I got better experience touching the router/modem security, # connections, etc that can actually reduce your available bw or add a few ms of latency.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    The easiest way is going to be multitasking and network stream prioritisation. One of the slides shown in the gallery has a Skype call during a max-bandwidth download, with Skype at a higher priority with packet round trip latency lower on the Killer end. We'll need to test this when we get the hardware.
  • ruthan - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    I want to see the test, no marketing slide repost..
  • hechacker1 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    They need to go and license out their tech to router manufacturers who have shitty QoS right now.

    It makes no sense putting this on the end users machine. I've used their cFOS rebranded product that Asus provides, and it's not that great. I didn't bother installing it this time around. It's better than nothing, but when I apply proper linux based QoS on my router it doesn't matter.
  • Daniel Egger - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Wow, what a huge marketing turd, shamelessly re-posted by AT.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    It's going to be on a significant number of motherboards and devices through 2017, and it was announced, and we discussed the tech with Rivet Networks. Why wouldn't we post that? We do it with plenty of other products and components on the market.
  • SteelRing - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Whitelist is fine... but what is more useful is blacklist all those ad servers, akamai, etc.... hardware-level AdBlock is something I would pay for.
  • doggface - Saturday, September 17, 2016 - link

    You might want to try a Pi-Hole...
    https://pi-hole.net/
  • Senti - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Kill this KILLER garbage! It greatly reduces the variety of motherboads I consider buying: I'd rather buy cheap old and decently working Realtec than anything KILLER.

    Why is it so hard to find a dual Intel NIC board? Plenty of otherwise decent motherboards just have to put that KILLER garbage in.

    And we are not even talking about how that influence price of higher end motherboards when users have to pay for "features" that no one actually wants.
  • danjw - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    A little behind the times, with people already switching to 10GBaseT networks, for their LAN.
  • sor - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link

    Great. I always wanted to run a bunch of buggy bloatware in exchange for maybe getting a minor, unnoticeable latency boost.
  • Communism - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    The only real solution to any of these things is to run your own windows edge router (AKA repurposed desktop or laptop running windows pretending to be a router).

    Requiring that your single PC be the only device connected to your ISP connection is a pretty big ask. (Which is what the "Killer" solutions require to do anything remotely meaningful).
  • doggface - Saturday, September 17, 2016 - link

    Really? Windows? I mean its a good desktop OS and not bad for a central server.. But edgerouter? That seems to be asking for random reboots, in-security, dodgy connections.
    Linux or BSD really seem like the only viable options for custom edge routers.
  • Communism - Sunday, September 18, 2016 - link

    Windows is much more secure than linux for the average user.

    Windows has all routing features built in. In linux, you have to test every combination of software and hardware yourself and at least some of your software needed for the job will not be updated for some reason or another and will open vulnerabilities.

    US Gov has backdoors into both so it's a wash there.

    The Windows router will generally stand up better against non-state actors do to much better support and best in class speed of patching of security vulnerabilities.
  • imaheadcase - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    The article is wrong on some accounts, the UI is o ly new for stand alone nic. Mothertboard makes have custom UI for it. Most the stuff you listed in UI is already in place.

    I personally hate killer nic on motherboard, they really offer nothing over tried and true intel nic, but raise price of mobo. Majority of people dont care about this, because modern routers do this in UI.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    New company, new licencing methodology. Software is available, and there's no reports of custom interfaces yet (or if it will be allowed). Software has been redesigned from the ground up, based on the new silicon. I've been told it is price competitive with Intel NICs.
  • Bigman397 - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Their driver suite has been a horror, you can use the stock qualcomm/atheros driver with a bit of customization.
  • cuex - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link

    Reading all the negative comments here regarding Killer NIC, seems I am the only one positive and happy using it.

    Have been using it for years as my motherboard is MSI Z87-G45 which is equipped with Killer E2200, never once I have instability mentioned in the other comments. Always updating the driver to latest one, and now using the new Sniper version (Killer Control Center 1.0.693.0) which is still in Beta (and already a Full Version for E2500).

    It seems most people here have monstrous internet speed which in fact nothing can be done in the NIC to help their internet as their internet has no problem in speed. But I, which is living with 1 Mbps Internet in Indonesia (no more than 1 Mbps can be subscribed here), where I mostly using internet for gaming yet I still want to download torrents, this is where Killer NIC does its work to make sure my gaming will not be lag while the download is moving at maximum speed.

    When upgrading to new PC, Killer NIC is a must-have in the motherboard I choose.

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