From The Bigfoot Killer NIC To Qualcomm And Back

From The Bigfoot Killer NIC To Qualcomm And Back Welcome to a Laptop AC Adapter specialist of the Msi Ac Adapter
PC gamers and longtime HotHardware readers will no doubt be familiar with the Killer series of network controllers. We’ve taken a look at a number of the add-in versions over the years, including the original beast with the massive “K” heatsink. Many of today’s gamer-targeted motherboards also feature Killer networking technology, like this Gigabyte motherboard we recently looked at, for example.
Though at their core Killer NICs are network controllers, that function just like more basic, mainstream solutions, they offer additional features designed to enhance performance and potentially improve the gaming experience. How the Killer NICs work their magic isn’t quite clear to gamers, however, so we thought we’d chat with Michael Cubbage, CEO at Rivet Networks – the current purveyors of Killer with adapter like Averatec 1020 90W Ac Adapter, Averatec 5200 90W Ac Adapter, LG P300 90W Ac Adapter, LG M1 Ac Adapter, LG LW60 Ac Adapter, LG R200 Ac Adapter, LG W1 Ac Adapter, MSI M510 Ac Adapter, MSI PR620 Ac Adapter, MSI VR610 Ac Adapter, MSI X480 Ac Adapter, MSI S250 Ac AdapterNetworking product – to learn more about what the company is up to and where it’s headed...
Sure. It’s been an exciting 12 months. As you know, Qualcomm Atheros acquired Bigfoot Networks in 2011. Before the acquisition, Bigfoot had the Killer line of networking products and was developing an advanced traffic shaping technology for routers. During our time at Qualcomm we spent a lot of effort improving the Killer products by moving them to a simpler, better, and more cost effective solution as well as dramatically increasing the OEM and ODM customer base.
Last December, we started a new company called Rivet Networks to focus on Killer and take advantage of what we think is a great opportunity in gaming/performance networking. This was a big move for a lot of reasons, but we felt that there was a lot more that we could do to enhance the networking experience of gamers. When creating solutions for gamers, you need to go all in from a product standpoint. That is what we have done. We have already tripled the investment into the product line. We also brought the critical talent from Bigfoot and Qualcomm along with us, including Wayne Dunlap who was the CTO of Bigfoot prior to the acquisition and managed the Killer line of products with me at Qualcomm. He and I created Rivet Networks, then hired Bob Grim, who left AMD to rejoin the technology he helped found with me years ago. We have a lot of momentum right now with our new products and company, and are really excited about it.
The short answer is that with both products we inspect every packet, automatically prioritize and manage every packet, and if necessary tag the packets appropriately so the rest of the internet will handle them in an optimal way. We call this technology Advanced Stream Detect, and with it we also give users the ability to set their own priorities on their networked applications through our Killer Network Manager software. Most other solutions are built for the masses focusing on connectivity and throughput, and while some of them are good products they are not designed with gaming in mind. Games don’t need a lot of data – in fact, games use only about 20Kbps of data on average. It’s a tiny amount, but it is very critical that data is not get delayed in any way. By detecting and accurately prioritizing each networked application, we can ensure that your critical applications that need data quickly get it as soon as possible.
The Killer Wireless-AC 1535 is a 2x2 11ac Wi-Fi adapter that ships with several performance enhancing features that we market under ExtremeRange Technology. One of the most important features here is full MU-MIMO support. The Killer Wireless-AC 1535 is currently the only 2x2 11ac Wi-Fi adapter in computers today to feature MU-MIMO support. Without going into a ton of detail on Multi-User MIMO, it is a feature that increases the overall usable bandwidth between multiple devices and a router by allowing multiple data transmissions at the same time. With this feature enabled, users can experience up to 60% additional throughput with their MU-MIMO enabled router when using the Killer Wireless-AC, 1535 and one other device.