14 DAY TRIAL // Even though it tried, Bigfoot Networks has failed to gain the success it hoped to acquire with its Killer line of Gigabit NICs, but its seems like the company's faith could be extremely different in the wireless space, where a recent review has found the performance delivered by the Killer-N 1102 WiFi impressive.
“This is one of the few times I’ve tested a product that surprised me. I figured all wireless adapters were pretty much the same, but my experience with the Killer Wireless-N 1102 card has been excellent.
“I can’t say I’ve ever felt wireless networking was something to worry about, but now I’ll need to reconsider,” read the conclusions of the Killer-N 1102 Wireless NIC review published by AnandTech.
According to the review, the main reason for the impressive performance demonstrated by Bigfoot's wireless-N solution is its support for the 5GHz radio band, which isn't as crowded as the 2.4GHz spectrum.
The Bigfoot Killer-N wireless networking adapter was announced by Bigfoot at the beginning of March 2011, and it uses the half-size mini-PCIe form factor as well as 2-stream MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) antennas to reach theoretical transfer speeds up to 300Mbps.
To further improve the latency of the card, this is compatible with Bigfoot's proprietary “Advanced Stream Detect” technology, which prioritizes network traffic to favor online games, HD video and other high-bandwidth applications.
Furthermore, bandwidth allocation can also be monitored and tuned by the end-user thanks to the included Visual Bandwidth Control software.
The Killer Wireless-N 1102 high-performance WiFi adapter is available right now in select Alienware, Eurocom and Maingear gaming notebooks, to name just a few, as well as a standalone product from Mythlogic.
When purchased on its own, the KillerN-1102 wireless card has a retail price of $39.99, while the faster KillerN-1103 sells for $59.99.
The main difference between the two adapters is the maximum data rate supported as the Killer Wireless-N 1103 can reach speeds of up to 450Mbps since it uses a 3 stream MIMO design, while the Killer Wireless-N 1102 is limited at 300Mbps.