Intel Once Again Exits The Wi-Fi AP/Router Biz

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Merlin was referring to the server/firewall side.

Realtek is from what I’ve seen generally looked down upon among both users and developers of various server/firewall distros for being unreliable along with buggy offload functions. pFsense for example in the checksum offload section of the settings menu gives Realtek a shout out as an example for adapters that grenerally have broken implementations. Compared to Realtek I think Intel and Chelsio generally have a much better track record though. I do recall reading that article where the Intel 2.5Gbps nic has issues with certain Netgear and Juniper switches but not Cisco or Aruba.

At the same time some where having crashes from buggy Realtek 2.5Gb nic drivers on Gigabyte x570 mobos, though fixed in newer updates. I can’t recall the last time I had an Intel nic or WiFi card crash my computer but have had plenty of experiences with Realtek. They have gotten better and I personally haven’t had issues with recent client side products at least. I probably would not use their cards in a firewall or a sever though.

i've had a realtek USB-C gigabit ethernet adapter crash a network , it is that bad. on paper realtek looks great, but when using it its terrible.

That said its important to understand where each brand flaws. intel has bugs in its wifi drivers that makes it unable to connect after sleep or that drops out sometimes. on my laptop there is a broadcom based wifi and NIC (its branded with gaming names but im pretty sure its broadcom) and isnt very stable as it disconnects at times at low traffic for wifi (NIC is decent) whereas broadcom used to be stable as the signal isnt great (something qualcomm is good at). qualcomm used to be less stable than broadcom in wifi connectivity but better signals though intel had broadcom level stability with bugs but faster than broadcom.

Realtek NICs are great for low latency, on the consumer end, realtek has the lowest latency of any NIC at an unbeatable price, however they simply dump all the processing onto the CPU, its how realtek reduces latency and cost by simply having less electronics to deal with in the first place and this approach does work as long as there is CPU to spare.

 

[unmesh]

USB-AC56

I have a Comfast with the same Realtek chip and did not see a material improvement. It has an internal antenna compared to the Asus, though, which may explain the difference.

 

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I have a Comfast with the same Realtek chip and did not see a material improvement. It has an internal antenna compared to the Asus, though, which may explain the difference.

when i tested i had the router very near the adapter. so its more of ideal conditions, its how i arrived to the typical 50-60% of wifi AC link bandwidth being practical.

 

[Mordred]

realtek beat intel by focusing on the media converter chip, and lets the CPU handle the rest. Intel NICs have a lot more features and usually work better especially for virtualisation, but in the consumer space intel has lost and as i mentioned bugs.

Dogsh*t. Once you are doing serious virtualization you don't use intel. You go mellanox. No wonder nvidia just bought mellanox.
Melanox 40/100G blows away intel. Intel is OK for 1 and 10G, but that's it.

 

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Dogsh*t. Once you are doing serious virtualization you don't use intel. You go mellanox. No wonder nvidia just bought mellanox.
Melanox 40/100G blows away intel. Intel is OK for 1 and 10G, but that's it.

quite different really. Melanox takes the developer approach (you can code with the card), whereas intel doesnt. Different directions.

I have a non working older melanox card :'(