In the past, upon hearing the word “Bigfoot”, the first thing that came to mind was a 9 foot tall bipedal primate that roams around in thick forests and preys on small children. That was until recently, when a company called Bigfoot Networks made their tumultuous entry into the hardware scene with the release of what they were calling the first and only network interface card designed for gamers. Initially, the community’s response to the announcement resembled that of a unanimous shrug, but eventually, enthusiasts took it a step further and began to criticize the legitimacy of the product altogether.

Packet shapers have existed for quite a while, and network interface cards that handle 100% of the network load have been available via various technologies for some time, as well. It thus made sense to think that this “KillerNIC” from Bigfoot Networks was 20% NIC, 80% gimmick. Perhaps a lot of this criticism was generated from the fact that the common networking load on the CPU usually hovers around 2-3%, and giving that 2-3% back to the processor by offloading it to a card does not really produce the kind of performance increase you could get from a video card or CPU upgrade; on the other hand, perhaps it was generated from the fact that nobody had really heard of Bigfoot Networks before.

In 2004, a gamer and electrical engineer-turned-businessman by the name of Harlan Beverly teamed up with two fellow University of Texas graduates to form Bigfoot Networks. The company’s original business plan won several prestigious awards, allowing the company to not only gain street credit, but also attract investors. Their very effective business plan, in tandem with Harlan Beverly’s network chip engineering experience - which includes the development of the world’s first 100% CPU off-load networking solution and involvement in the design of the Intel PRO 1000 chipset during his tenure at Intel Corp - suggested that this new company had loads of potential.

Their first commercial product, the Killer Network Interface Card (or KillerNIC as it has come to be known) has been the target of huge amounts of community attention, and today we will finally get a chance to see what this killer is made of.