14 DAY TRIAL // D-Link has released a fairly peculiar networking adapter, one that claims to be a 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express networking adapter but can, in actuality, move data up to twice as fast as that.
High-speed, reliable data transmissions aren't what they used to be, and that can be taken any number of ways, something that D-Link is all too conscious of.
All computers have Gigabit Ethernet nowadays, and that's pretty quick, but recently, Wi-Fi technology has attained that throughput as well.
Obviously, having a PC with no cable LAN advantage over wireless would be decidedly bizarre, but it actually happens these days.
That means that the authorities in local area networking and wired Ethernet need an ace. 10 Gigabit Ethernet is that ace.
However, D-Link decided to do something really weird and release a 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter that can reach 20 Gbps on a good day.
You see, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology is still used. 20 Gbps are achieved only when the thing functions in Full Duplex mode. It effectively eliminates the bottlenecks strangling the 32- and 64-bit PCI bus architectures.
The name of “the thing” is D-Link DXE-810S 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ Adapter, and the price is a healthy $340 / €249 - €340.
The maximum power consumption is of 4.48 watts in case you were wondering, and the device also boasts support for multiple subnets to each server.
Devices can be isolated within each virtual LAN from the rest of the network, so as to ensure higher security and traffic control.
802.3x Flow Control, Jumbo Frames and SNMP for network management are supported in all cases, ensuring good interoperation with existing equipment.
Then, there's checksum offloading (TCP, UDP and IP checksum offloading functionality, transferring the checksum processing tasks from the computer's CPU to the network card, thus cutting CPU processing burden).
In layman terms, the D-Link DXE-810S will do what existing “enterprise” and server / data center network cards do, only a lot better.
As for design, if you take a look at the D-Link DXE-810S 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ Adapter, you'll notice that it isn't all that embellished. It's a dry, utilitarian piece of hardware, not the sort of thing that will pretty up your side-windowed desktop. Which makes sense considering that D-Link doesn't intend to sell it to normal customers.
You'll not be stopped if it shows up on a retailer web page of course, but the device is a bit advanced for PCs (as they are right now).