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To take advantage of gigabit over copper, your server needs gigabit-over-copper NICs. SysKonnect's SK-9822 card is an ace in the hole.
When we began our tests, we solicited gigabit-over-- copper NICs from Alteon Web Systems, Intel, Sun Microsystems, SysKonnect and 3Com. Only Intel and SysKonnect could pony up a product, with Alteon backing out because it didn't want to compete against Intel's beta product. As of press time, the 3Com product is an Alteon OEM card. Sun Microsystems simply said it didn't want its products to be part of any competitive tests.
In our two-vendor NIC shootout, SysKonnect's card was the clear winner. Intel's early beta card showed promise, but some outstanding driver issues caused the card to behave improperly under high receive-traffic loads.
We tested both vendors' cards in a Compaq Computer Corp. ML-530 enterprise workgroup server with dual 800-MHz Pentium III Xeon processors and 640 MB of RAM. Using Ganymede Software's Chariot 3.2 testing software, we connected a dozen PCs as clients and hammered the server with TCP-based file copy traffic (simulated using Chariot's filesndl script) to determine maximum server throughput. We made no changes to the operating system other than to install the latest NIC drivers and service packs.
SysKonnect SK-9822 100OBase-T Gigabit Ethernet
SysKonnect has a reputation for making high-quality server-class products for enterprise applications, and the SK-9822 is no exception. SysKonnect's gigabit-over-copper adapter is available in single- and dual-port configurations. We tested the single-port version and took a quick look at the dual-port adapter. Both adapters feature the same...