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NIC is an acronym for Network Interface Card. It is hardware that is inside the CPU, which allows the computer to connect to a network. It is a circuit board that is installed in a CPU without which you cannot connect your computer to a dedicated network. Almost every computer has a motherboard, and most of them have a built-in Network Interface Card. Some of these cards are for wired networks and others for wireless.

Types of Network Interface Card

Network Interface Card is generally of two types, and those are internal network card and internal network card. Let’s discuss further what these types are:

Internal Network Card

An internal network card refers to the card which is inserted in the motherboard. The motherboard has a slot where this card can be added and cables are used to provide network access to the computer. The internal network card is further of two types: PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) and ISA (Industry Standard Architecture).

External Network Card

External Network card is generally used in those desktops and laptops which doesn’t have in-built NIC in their motherboard. You can use either of the two types of external network card wireless or USB based. If you choose a wireless card, then you are required to insert it into the motherboard to have access to the network. You will not need any cable to connect to the network.

Purpose of using Network Interface Card

Earlier, computers were operated as stand-alone systems, and it wasn’t easy to connect them to other computers or networks. When people are required to transfer files between computers, then floppy-disk were used to transfer data. However, these floppy-disks used to carry only small bits of data at a time. Therefore, the emergence of another substitute was essential for making this process easier and faster. Thus, they came up with the Network interface card to let the computer become a part of the network.

How fast are network cards?

It depends on the type of NICs that on what speed they run. Usually, the Network interface card has a speed rating, including 11Mbps, 54mbps, and 100Mbps. The speed of the internet doesn’t determine the speed of the network card. It can differ because of the external factors like speed you are paying for and bandwidth. For instance, if you are paying 40 Mbps download speed, using a 100 Mbps network interface card will not help you in increasing your speed to 100Mbps, not even 1 unit more than the original speed. Nevertheless, if you are paying for 30 Mbps but your NIC supports only 11, then you will experience slower download speed because the installed hardware component doesn’t support the full speed.

Components of Network interface cards

Every NIC comprises of the following five components:

Speed:  Each NIC has a speed rating in terms of Mbps, just like internet speed that generally depicts the performance of the card. The variety of speed in which NIC is available includes 1Gbps, 1000 Mbps, 100Mbps, and 10Mbps. When connected to an ample network, it shows the speed. If the NIC speed is higher than the bandwidth of your internet connection, then your internet will run on the speed you are paying for. However, if it is lower than the bandwidth, then internet speed will fluctuate and will slow down to labeled speed.

Driver: A driver is required between the NIC and computer’s operating system that will help in passing data among them. The driver is automatically downloaded once you connect a NIC to your computer. Driver updates itself using the internet to provide you an uninterrupted and optimal performance of NIC.

Router: A router is generally used to allow communication between devices connected to the network and the computer. In the case of NIC, we connect a NIC connected device to the router, which is further connected to the internet.

Mac address: It is also known as the physical network address that is unique and unchangeable for every computer connected to the internet. It is uniquely assigned to each NIC to deliver Ethernet packets to the computer.

Connectivity LED: Mostly network interface card comes with a LED indicator. This indicator indicates when data ix`s being transmitted and when it is connected to the network.                                                              

We cover 5 things for you when you buy motherboard online because, the motherboard is one of the most important components that you need to make your PC work. Nothing else is going to work without it. The motherboard is the only thing that can decide what upgrades you must make for the future. Also, when a PC becomes obsolete, there comes a time to replace it.

The buyers who are going to buy the motherboards for the first time might need to know a bit about the motherboard purchase and its background knowledge. Even the experienced one sometime is unaware of the latest technologies prevailing in the market.

These are the things that you need to consider before buying a motherboard:

Form Factor To Buy Motherboard Online:

The first thing that you need to select is the form factor. Try for the ATX motherboard that is most common in the market. These motherboards are very smaller in size and reduce the number of expansion slots. When you are going to choose a motherboard, it can be the case that you are not sure of the size, you can always measure or compare it with your old motherboard. Or try and compare it with different sizes of the motherboard to see whether what motherboard is going to be the best fit for you.

ATX technology is popular and it also has the addition of more expansion slots, which can be very useful.

Check Processor socket to buy Motherboards:

After you have figured out the size of the motherboard, the next thing that you need is the processor socket. There are different types of sockets available in the past but nowadays there are three which have been mostly available in the market. These three kinds of sockets are BGA, LGA, and PGA. the next big question is whether you want to buy Intel motherboard online from eSaiTech or will to some other option and Buy Motherboard Online. This is so because intel is using the LGA sockets. Although the BGA socket is not as popular as LGA sockets as it cannot be upgraded or serviced.

The type of socket that you choose for your motherboard is going to determine the processor for your motherboard. Try to consider what CPU you want before you decide the type of motherboard.

RAM (Random Access Memory):

RAM is also known as Random Access Memory, the motherboard that you buy is going to decide what kind and how much of RAM is needed for your CPU. so make this decision before you are going to buy a motherboard. You must consider the nature of work that will be done on the CPU. For example, if you want to assemble a PC for gaming or video editing purposes, then you need to go for a higher RAM. Or if you are using the PC just normally for home or office, A normal 4 GB of RAM would suffice.

Also consider how many RAM slots are there on the Motherboard, so that you can upgrade it for the future. Buy a 16 GB RAM is enough to suffice for any purpose you want to use the PC for.

Features You Should Have In A Motherboard:

If you are going with the motherboards which have a lot of inbuilt features, then you do not have to but any other cards online. You can buy AMD motherboard online as it comes with a good in-built graphic card, unlike Intel motherboards. You can go with AMD if you are a gamer. Intel would be better for those who are using the PC for regular use.  Some motherboards have features like good in-build sound cards, video cards, RAM slots, and a powerful battery. It is also worth noticing that many motherboards are offering various Bluetooth and Wi-Fi features, that might cost you more if you are getting them after you buy the motherboard. Choosing a motherboard with extra features is going to reduce the need for expanding cards or upgrades and will also reduce the cost.

Conclusion:

The motherboard will keep all the components together and make them work in harmony. It is better to check all these things before you look for a suitable motherboard for yourself online.

Raid stands for redundant array of independent disks. Maybe you have heard this term for the first time, but a raid controller is a hardware device or a program that is used to manage the hard disk drives (HDD) or Solid-State Drives (SSDs). This ensures that hard disks work as a logical unit.

A RAID controller is going to provide a level of protection to the stored data. It will also help in improving computing performance which is done by accelerating access to stored data.

What is The Use of RAID Controller?

The controller offers a level of interaction between the operating system and the physical drives. RAID can be a hardware or software both. RAID application presents sections of the drives to the operating systems and applications as a logical unit.

For them, data protection schemes can be defined. The logical units might appear as the portions of drives to the operating system and the applications, even though they comprise of many drives. The controller has the ability to improve the performance and protect the data in any event of a crash because it has the ability to access multiple copies of the data on various physical devices.

There are various RAID configurations up to ten as well as numerous proprietary variations of the standard set of RAID levels. The RAID controller will be supporting a specific RAID level or a group of various related levels.

Hardware and software RAID Controllers:

The physical controller is able to manage the RAID array in the hardware-based RAID. the controller can easily take the form of PCI or PCI Express card. This card is designed to support a specific drive format such as SCSI or SATA. there are some RAID controllers that can also be integrated with the motherboard. The RAID controllers which are hardware are also known as RAID Adapters.

The Prices of hardware RAID controllers are very affordable. The sophisticated hardware RAID controllers can perform well enough such as Adaptec ASR-72405. They can perform good enough to share network storage and helps in the procurement of significant stored data.

There are various companies right now which are offering RAID Controllers at this time. There are some key features that are going to help you decide when you are out to choose a Hardware RAID controller.

SATA and/or SAS interface

Power consumption

Read/write performance

PCIe interface

Operating system compatibility

Number of devices supported

Read/write performance

IOPs rating

Cache size

Encryption capabilities

Well, A Raid controller can also be a software-only by using the hardware resources of the host system, most particularly the host’s DRAM and CPU. There is not much difference between the Software based RAID controllers and the Hardware based ones, but the performance is typically less than the hardware version of the controllers.

One of the main advantages of using a software RAID controller is its flexibility and low cost as there is no hardware required. It is very important to make sure that the host system is powerful enough to run the RAID software without having any negative effect on the performance of the on-going applications that are running on the host.

There is various RAID controller software for example windows server is providing various RAID capabilities with its storage spaces facility. LINUX is also providing the RAID facility which is via Linux madam utility.

There is many third-party RAID controller software available in the market. These programs are enough for small installations but will not be able to stand up to the storage performance and the capacity and the requirements of the capacity of various business environments.

So, there are various storage arrays that are employing various software RAID controllers. The software is typically designed by the vendors and only proves to provide adequate performance. But the performance cannot match the performance of Hardware RAID controllers like Adaptec ASR-6805E.

Conclusion:

Before you are going to choose the RAID controller, make sure you are deciding on whether how big the data is and what type of data you want to store.