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Gigabit Ethernet NICs
To view the Report card on Gigabit Ethernet NICsNo gigabit solution is complete without gigabit server connectivity. Unlike the wire-speed switches we tested, these products were significantly differentiated in terms of performance. We tested NICs on the Intel Corp. platform from Alteon, Intel, ODS Networks, Packet Engines and 3Com Corp. Of these, the Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter was leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in both price and performance, earning it Editor's Choice and Best Value awards. On the Unix side, Alteon provided a PCI SBUS adapter and SGI sent a PCI adapter for the SGI platform. The SGI product had the most robust performance characteristics in the Unix space, and earns our Editor's Choice honors.

Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter

If speed is what you need, look no further. The Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

The Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter is everything you need to get your network going faster. In the lab, installation took was fast and easy. The handy PROSet diagnostics tool included in the installation had the NIC configured and talking to the switch within minutes. PROSet included full diagnostics as well as options for setting link duplex and other NIC parameters.

In our benchmarks, the Intel PRO/1000 smoked the competition. In a unidirectional test, the NIC churned out 647 Mbps of traffic. CPU utilization across four processors averaged 81.5 percent. The closest competition to Intel under Windows NT was Packet Engines' GNIC II. The PRO/1000 cleared the performance of the GNIC II by more than 28 percent. In our full-duplex test, the card mustered 376 Mbps with 71.2 percent CPU load, the highest of any of the Intel Windows NT adapters we tested.

The Intel NIC has an extensive list of hardware features, including on-board TCP/IP checksum generation, interrupt-coalescing, 802.1Q VLAN tagging, fault-tolerant failover capability and full auto-negotiation and flow-control features. It also does some intelligent guesswork if Gigabit Ethernet autonegotiation fails. The Intel NIC was the only NIC that didn't require us to manually configure full-duplex operation on the nonautonegotiating ports of the Lucent P550 Cajun Switch.

The Intel NIC comes with drivers for Windows NT and IntranetWare, as well as SCO UnixWare and a DOS ODI client for getting started. Next on the list for Intel is Solaris x86. No other drivers were in the works at the time we tested, but any future drivers will support Intel's Advanced Fault Tolerance (AFT) load-balancing and failover software.

At a list price of $799, the Intel NIC was also the lowest-priced NIC we tested. What more could you possibly ask for than maximum performance and minimum price?

Packet Engines G-NIC II

To Packet Engines' credit, it sent us its G-NIC-II, even though the devices was still in beta when we tested it. The G-NIC II is Packet Engines' second-generation Gigabit Ethernet adapter. As one of the first vendors to ship a Gigabit NIC, Packet Engines has had plenty of time to refine the technology. The G-NIC II was the second-fastest Intel-based adapter we tested.

The G-NIC II from Packet Engines was close on the heels of the Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter. Packet Engines has been working hard to get the performance of the GNIC-II to a comparable level against the Intel NIC. In the lab, we measured 457 Mbps of throughput in our unidirectional tests, with an average of 47.23 percent utilization over four processors. The G-NIC II has plenty of room to optimize performance, based on the CPU utilizations we saw in the test. In the bidirectional test, the GNIC-II pulled in 308.7 Mbps with 45.85 percent CPU utilization, again a solid second place.

Like the Intel NIC, the Packet Engines G-NIC II supports TCP/IP checksum off-loading, interrupt-coalescing, 802.1Q VLAN tagging, fault tolerance, load-balancing, autonegotiation and flow control. Unique to the G-NIC II was its extensive driver support--it accommodated nearly every platform we could imagine, including Mac OS and Linux, in addition to a more standard suite of Windows NT, IntranetWare, Solaris x86, SPARC, FreeBSD, SGI Irix and Digital Equipment Unix. It lists for $995.

3Com Corp. Gigabit Etherlink Server Adapter

3Com's Gigabit Ethernet card is an OEM product from Alteon Networks. However, because 3Com uses older hardware than Alteon and SGI, we chose to test it separately. The 3Com adapter shares the same feature set as the Alteon AceNIC, but it ships with drivers for Windows NT only. NetWare drivers are planned for fall 1998.

In the lab, the 3Com NIC commanded 323.6 Mbps of data at 59.75 percent CPU utilization in our unidirectional test. In the bidirectional test, performance was average--242.5 Mbps at 35.8 percent CPU utilization--hardly stellar, yet 3Com finds its way into the middle of the pack with this product. The 3Com NIC does not support failover or load-balancing at this time; 802.1Q VLAN tagging, autonegotiation and flow control are supported.

3Com lists the Gigabit Etherlink for $899.

Alteon AceNIC/Silicon Graphics IRIS Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

The Alteon AceNIC is Alteon's second-generation Gigabit Adapter NIC. Alteon is fortunate to have several OEM vendors doing additional development for its hardware, including Silicon Graphics and Compaq's Digital Equipment Corp. entity. We tested Alteon's PCI adapter on the Intel Windows NT platform and the Sun SPARC platform. We also tested the SGI PCI version of this card in a high-performance SGI Octane.

On the Intel platform, the AceNIC performed very well. In our tests, it managed 342.8 Mbps with 68.9 percent average CPU utilization over four processors. In our bidirectional test, it topped out at 235.32 Mbps with 48.74 percent CPU utilization. Both of these numbers were just slightly behind Packet Engines' NIC, although CPU utilization was marginally higher.

Moving the AceNIC to our Sun Ultra 60 dual-processor workstation, we expected to see extremely high numbers due to the 66-MHz bus in the UltraSPARC. The NIC sustained 452.56 Mbps of traffic on this platform, slightly higher than Packet Engines' NIC on the Intel platform, though that comparison is somewhat apples to oranges. The NIC did very well in the bidirectional test, sustaining 390 Mbps of throughput. It is obvious the Sun drivers for the Alteon adapter have been optimized for both sending and receiving data, as its throughput is quite a bit better than that of its competitors.

On the SGI platform, the Iris Gigabit Ethernet Adapter displayed similar performance characteristics to the Alteon Sun adapter. In the lab, we measured performance of 471.3 Mbps at 60 percent CPU utilization. Likewise, we measured a stellar 435.6 Mbps of throughput at 66 percent CPU utilization in our bidirectional throughput tests. SGI has put an immense amount of time into optimizing this driver for real-world throughput, and it especially shows in the amount of traffic the NIC can receive. Receiving traffic always puts more load on the server than sending traffic, and SGI had the highest performance of any NIC in this benchmark for receiving data.

All Alteon NICs support TCP/IP checksum off-loading, interrupt-coalescing for faster performance, 802.1Q VLAN tagging, 802.3x flow control, and 802.3z gigabit auto-negotiation. The Alteon NIC supports failover, though the SGI drivers don't implement this feature. SGI is working on load-balancing for the Alteon NIC on their platform.

Alteon also features Jumbo frames, a proprietary technology that permits the NIC to create huge packets of data. This is highly beneficial to throughput, since the NIC need only generate one-fifth the transmit and receive interrupts to get the job done. However, these jumbo frames can be used only in a back-to-back environment, or in an environment where Alteon's switches are deployed.

The 64-bit, 33/66-MHz PCI NIC sells for $1,095 from Alteon, while SGI charges $2,100 for the hardware and software for its platform.

ODS/Essential JackRabbit Gigabit Ethernet NIC

The Jackrabbit NIC from ODS Networks (formerly Essential) was the slowest NIC we tested. It was also the most expensive at $3,995.

The JackRabbit is a 32-bit PCI card. Because it doesn't take advantage of 64-bit 66-MHz PCI, the JackRabbit NIC's performance was considerably poorer than that of the other products we tested. In fact, in our unidirectional throughput tests, the JackRabbit NIC only pushed a sustained 33 Mbps, though bursts were as high as 200 Mbps. We attribute this poor performance to the NIC driver and 32-bit PCI architecture. In our bidirectional tests, the NIC handled 228 Mbps of traffic, though the server came to a grinding halt while the benchmark was running -- a development we did not encounter with other NIC cards.

The JackRabbit NIC supports TCP/IP checksum off-loading, interrupt-coalescing and 802.3x flow control. It does not support 802.1Q VLAN tagging, load-balancing or failover features.

ODS recently acquired Essential Communications and the JackRabbit Gigabit Ethernet NIC, and the company asked us to highlight the synergy between the ODS LanBlazer 7000 line and the JackRabbit Gigabit Ethernet NIC. However, in all good conscience, we cannot recommend the JackRabbit NIC for use in a Windows NT environment. The NIC just doesn't meet the performance requirements for high-speed data connectivity.