TCP/IP acceleration or TCP/IP offload engine

[kenr77]

I have seen a lot of mother board specications/descriptions say that the Gigabyte LAN interface has a feature called "TCP/IP acceleration". After searching I found that it is also called a "TCP/IP offload engine".

My question is this. Does any OS or application make use of this feature or does it require something special...???? Since this is a Hardware feature, does just having the correct Driver make it so that the OS and Web Browser make use of it..??


THX, kenr77 Posted this in the Network forum, but have'nt
gotten a Reply....

 

[quartzlock]

Hi, although I'm not an expert in this matter, tcp/ip offloading refers to the capability of the network hardware to calculate checksums and other things instead of doing it using the cpu. This is afaik pure driver implementation, meaning that the driver is the only one who has(should have) access to the offload hardware and make use of it. This is not something you will notice with normal browsing but only when transferring files or streaming HD feeds through a gigabit Ethernet lan with jumbo frames enabled, unless you have a gigabit connection to the internet backbone .

Saludos

 

[Guest]

Agree with the above poster. Also the offloading capabilities of Consumer motherboard(even server motherboard) should be limited at best.

A quick search for a actual TCP offload engine will show you that a card alone is often 900$+. The closest you can get for the desktop is the KillerNic from bigfoot.

All that being said, I would take this feature as marketing and should not affect your buying decision.

 

[kenr77]

I asked this question because many Low/Medium MainStream MBs have an integrated GigaBit Lan interface that has "TCP/IP Acceleration" and the only description I have found concerning this refers to "TCP/IP Offload Engine" or TOE. I believe your $900 NIC is not what I have found on these MBs. Here is a link to one from ASUS listed at $87.00 at NewEgg...

M2N4-SLI

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=370&l4=0&model=1266&modelmenu=2

Check it out Please Reply..

THX,
kenr77

 

[picho]

Here's some more information on what you can expect from the onboard NIC:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/network/taskoffload.mspx

It will probably have checksum and segmentation offload capabilities. Almost certainly it will not have ipsec offload.

The more advanced TCP acceleration is TCP Chimney. This is what you'll find on the more expensive cards:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/network/TCP_Chimney.mspx

Hope this helps.