Network Card for Gamers - Uses Linux to Reduce Lag

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."

Yes.

[Spazntwich]

I'm sure another layer of abstraction to the network is exactly what gamers need to reduce lag.

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.

Huh?

[SatanicPuppy]

It's always been my understanding that the bigger bottlenecks are upstream of your NIC. I mean, my home network set up goes gigabit from my desktop to my hardware router, gigabit from my router to my gateway firewall, then gigabit (minus a few MTU) to my DSL modem, and after that the speed gets massively reduced and there's nothing I can do about it. My lan latency is practically non-existant.

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.

network card lag?

[Fullaxx]

since when is lag caused by your local NIC? So what if you get an extra .001 ms to your router? Never once have I seen my cpu above 5% b/c of network usage, even full network usage. No way is this legit

Two reasons.

[khasim]

#1. It's more difficult to issue updated software in firmware.

#2. It's another chip. Software is far cheaper than hardware for OEM's.

Is this really needed?

[adamwright]

As a small test, I ran up Quake 3 on it's highest settings, and had it play back a reasonably heavy demo. Now, Quake3 isn't the most modern of games, but it can still peg a CPU at 100%. Then, I found the latency to my router.

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.

Re:Yes.

[jandrese]

Woo! It saves that 0.1% of my modern CPU that is going for UDP checksum calculations and uh, well UDP doesn't exactly require a lot of processing...

Retarded,

[u16084]

If your ISP sucks ass, a $250 lan card is not going to help.

So it's a QoS Network Card?

[tlhIngan]

The only thing I can guess it needs Linux for is to do the routing and QoS services (see lartc.org)...

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:Yes.

[tomstdenis]

TCP isn't avoided because it's slow but because it's totally useless for streaming applications (e.g. games). Missing packets is much more easy to deal with than halting waiting for missing packets.

Maybe that shows the founders don't know that much about networking?

Tom

The telling comment at the end

[grasshoppa]

All the founders met at the University of Texas while getting their MBAs.

That says all that needs to be said for the article.

I've said it before...

[BertieBaggio]

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]

[2] No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light.

(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.

What a waste of money

[spun]

What kind of geek wannabe would waste money on this? Nowhere on their site do they show benchmarks or even vague references to how much this will speed up your networking or FPS. Oooh! it offloads network processing, leaving your CPU free to PLAY THE GAME!!! That's probably going to speed things up by like .5%. AWESOME!!! TO THE MAX!!!

This is the tech equivalent of herbal viagra.

Re:Huh?

[forkazoo]

It's always been my understanding that the bigger bottlenecks are upstream of your NIC. I mean, my home network set up goes gigabit from my desktop to my hardware router, gigabit from my router to my gateway firewall, then gigabit (minus a few MTU) to my DSL modem, and after that the speed gets massively reduced and there's nothing I can do about it. My lan latency is practically non-existant.

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 .3 ms latency I have inside this building, none of it is due to the switch, and none of it is due to actual wire delay, then about half of the latency is my system, and half is from the server. So, my NIC is responsible for abou 0.15 ms of latency.

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 .15 ms to .05 ms), I'd be shaving my total latency for the connection to 149.9 ms (from 150ms).

Which would improve my lag by .06%

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.

Re:Yes.

[CyberBill]

A lot of games are TCP based... World of Warcraft for example. Even games that arent exactly TCP are typically a reliable messaging system on top of UDP that pretty much mimics TCP.

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 :P )

Re:Yes.

[Zebra_X]

WOW. Just wow. I think that I have seen it all. This fellow has actually posted a smart, witty and insightful comment about a totally bunk product and got modded troll as a result.

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!

Re:Is it credible?

[snowgirl]

It's obvious that they're all about the business here.

"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.

I think you are making some invalid comparisions

[Sycraft-fu]

For example take the CRT thing. I own such a CRT, and it's not marketed to gamers, it's marketed to professionals. Why the refersh rate then? Simple function of it's ability to go super high resolution. The monitor is rated to do 2048x1536 @85Hz. To do that, takes some fast electron guns. Well, that ability implies higher refresh rates at lower resolutions. It can do over 200Hz at 800x600 because the resolution is so low. The point is to get extremely high resolutions at usable refresh rates. Also, in general, you want your device spec'd above what it's supposed to actually do. You don't want to run it at it's limits all the time.

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.

Looks every bit as credible....

[Anonymous Coward]

...as the BitBoys Glaze3D video card that was announced about the same time that it was also announced that Duke Nukem Forever was going into development.

Oy!

Re:Yes.

[mrbcs]

IMNSHO, most latency is caused by "CRAPPY $5 onboard NETWORK CARDS!"

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.

Re:Linux

[Miniluv]

Because this way they had 7 bullets of bullshit instead of 1.

With just 1 they would've had to only charge $199.99.

Re:Is it credible? Of course not

[frovingslosh]

I don't know what's sadder, that some fools would actually hand over money to a bunch of MBA who claim to someow have designed a better network interface than engineers, and who can't understand that these claim are completely bogus, or that Slashdot actually gives them a soapbox to further pitch their snakeoil from (perhaps because of the use of the term Linux in the hype).

whoa! killer nic! rockin! totally tubular man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally tubular! tubular, hmmm wait a sec... won't this like killer nic end up blocking the bits in my internet tube? Ah, no got it. Whenever ya squeeze the hose it raises the pressure. No wonder the games will go faster. Freaky rockin' wow! and so cheep.

Re:Is it credible?

[tigga]

Greasy marketing doesn't necessarily imply an inferior product. It could be that three college comp. eng. buddies developed the card, and the only marketing talent they could afford was that guy Jeff who used to hit on everyone while drunk at a frat party. The nice thing about network card performance claims is that they're pretty straight-forward to emperically test, once the hardware is out. I expect Toms Hardware will do a good job testing its claims, like they did with the recently released physics accelerator cards.

The problem is they describe NIC in snake-oil terms. They try to bullshit people.

The funny part majority of gamers should not care about NICs. Just anything should work if Internet connection at 1-6 Mb/s.

Re:Is it credible?

[SoloFlyer2]

While the network card Might improve the network connectivity for that one person, it more than likely does it by hurting the performance of the the network as a whole...

IE see the ALOHA protocol...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_protocol#The_AL OHA_protocol [wikipedia.org]

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...

Re:Yes.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

My guess is that the drivers are broken. I can't imagine anyone shipping an Ethernet NIC that, by design, adds 75-125 ms of latency to each frame.

Re:So it's a QoS Network Card?

[Hamoohead]

Some of you may remember the CD pen? A green magic marker that you use to color the edges of your CDs so the laser beam wouldn't leak out the edges? Check out http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Audiophile_20Hearin g_20Test [halfbakery.com] for details. Or how about the CD demagnitizer (http://www.gcaudio.com/cgi-bin/store/showProduct. cgi?id=190 [gcaudio.com]) to remove that annoying light-bending magnetic field from your precious collection. I could go on, but not without deviating more from the thread topic.

Notwithstanding that the average person sees/hears no difference between these "tweaks" and the normal off-the-shelf fair, companies like this are lucrative enough in that small niche market to make a profit. People with "ophile syndrome" will never be convinced that their perceptions are somehow flawed. As a former manager of an audiophile store and a technician of 30 years, I can attest to that. The more you argue, the more they will be convinced that you are unable to appreciate the finer points of whatever they are into.

Is this net card snake oil? Probably. Is it stupid to pay $279 for a network card to gain 1-2 FPS advantage? I won't buy one, but value is a matter of perception (however flawed). Yes *ophiles are a curious bunch with deep pockets. The extension to the computer market was inevitable. I'm just surprised no one thought of this marketing angle sooner.

3com cards are so 2001

[Ayanami Rei]

You want one of the following (in order of desirability):
1) Intel
2) Marvel
3) Via/Rhine
4) RealTek

And fuck the rest.
Yes, fuck Broadcomm and their shitty SMP-deficient drivers.

Re:It gets better

[Sledgy]

If you read the artical you would see that they are not claiming they invented TCP offload, but adding support for UDP offload (as most games use UDP and not TCP).

Although in saying that, I can't really see how this card is going to make much difference over the internet. Your connection or the configuration of your ISP is more likely to be where the lag is introduced rather than your NIC.

Re:Ted Stevens and I believe the card works

[QuantumFTL]

Okay that's it, I officially declare the 'internet is a series of tubes' reference not funny any more.

Yeah, to be honest, of all the things said during that horrid speech, that was the most accurage. tubes/pipes, WTF is the difference?

Re:It gets better

[MoxFulder]

UDP offload???? Gimme a break :-)

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.