Rivet Networks Launches E2600 Gigabit Network Controller
by Ian Cutress on May 30, 2019 2:00 PM EST
This year Computex is full of launches, and the land of network controllers is no exception. Rivet Networks, who makes the Killer line of enhanced NICs, is updating its popular E2500 design with the E2600, which is initially going to be found on a series of MSI notebooks as well as moving out into motherboard designs and system designs from popular OEMs. The new design enhances the Killer Intelligence Engine inside the controller, providing a more detailed understanding of the traffic passing through.
The Intelligence Engine inside the Rivet Network products is actually rather neat (personal opinion). Through a variety of hardware algorithms, it can determine what type of traffic is going through the chip without actually looking at the data: VOIP, gaming, video download, file download, file upload, streaming, torrents, and many other besides. Rivet Networks can also parse out to a large degree which service is being used (Netflix vs Youtube for example), all without actually looking at the data being transferred, but at the patterns of data transfer. By analysing the data flow, it can prioritise packets that are latency sensitive, such as games or voice, over non-latency sensitive data, such as downloads. In can do this under the hood without any additional CPU load or monitoring services, or users can override the settings in software. The new Killer E2600 enables the company to improve its update roadmap going into the future by expanding its capabilities.
New features in the Killer stack also include network performance optimization for end-users. The updated tool to help users adjust the hardware based network prioritization also includes an optimization tool that can analyse the quality of the network and the system and provide suggestions (such as closing programs, disabling services, software prioritization adjustment) that might assist in improved frame rates and a better gaming user experience. This tool is included in the software for the Rivet Wi-Fi 6 solution also.
Laptops with the E2600 are being demonstrated at Computex, and we expect to see it migrate into desktops over the course of 2019.
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19 Comments
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Azurael - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
Yup, QCA designs for the ethernet chips, they must've been thinking of the Killer wireless chips which are rebadged Intel designs.Thankfully, you can use the standard QCA driver sets on them too, then they at least work as well as any other QCA ethernet controller (that is to say not quite as well as the Intel ethernet controller my current mobo also has which delivers slightly lower latency and CPU load for sustained transfers.)
mooninite - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link
1Gb? In 2019? Immediately DOA. Any new networking products *must* be 2.5/5/10Gb capable (at least one of the 3 speeds).Lord of the Bored - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
"Any new networking products *must* be multi-Gb."There you go.
PeachNCream - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link
Wake me up when Rivet announces the company is going bankrupt or being sued via class action for misleading marketing. Those would be press releases worth getting excited about.ST33LDI9ITAL - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link
Honestly, I'm not a fan of Killer, quite the opposite actually as I got burned with their early nic's as so many others did with terrible drivers and support. They have slowly made a decent comeback and now that they are using Intel tech with Killer software it's pretty decent. Anything that helps latency and bufferbloat is good imo. Killer just makes the optimizations easy and accessible to users. The options to tweak network settings have always been available to help games but you need to know what you are doing. Sadly, even if common Joe gets Killer on client side, still tons of room left for bad networking with modem, router, cables, wireless, etc. So, in the end, you still need to know what you are doing when it comes to optimizing your network for latency and packets. Hopefully new wifi standard coming up will fix a lot of old issues with wireless. It's definitely a step in right direction. But if you game, please, learn to optimize your network and wifi or just plug it in ffs.Ian Cutress - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
Killer stagnated a lot under Qualcomm. Its now its own entity not tied to qualcomm at all, and they're now making vast improvements and taking feedback.CheapSushi - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
I honestly want them to create another PCIe NIC card again.erple2 - Sunday, June 16, 2019 - link
One of their NICs came with a MoBo I had a while ago. I found it nice to de-prioritize game updates or battle.net updates (when I played blizzard games) over other traffic, and the software was very simple to use. Probably can get just as much with QoS shaping in Windows directly, but I'm not a Network Admin, so none of it makes enough sense to me to do on my own.That being said, I can't say that it made that much of a difference. If they're now piggybacking off Intel Networking chips, that's probably a good thing.
A.Hamster.Gaming - Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - link
Their parent company has a website that is inaccessible. That's a bit troubling...rivet network