CASwell NIP-88010 Network Adapter With 100-Gigabit-Ethernet In Uniquely Compatible And Compact Design

Dual-Port Device Using PCI Express 3.0 X16 To Bring Ultra-Fast Networking To High-End CASwell Server Systems

12/04/2018 – CASwell has expanded its wide networking product range with the new NIP-88010 network adapter to the highest bandwith currently available. The NIP-88010 with its two QSFP28 fibre ports offers 100-Gigabit-Ethernet while using the revolutionary PCI Express design developed by CASwell for easy installation, high compatibility and upgradability in a compact form factor.

The CASwell NIP-88010 is based on the Mellanox® ConnectX-4 Ethernet controller and equipped with two fully integrated Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) and phyiscal layer (PHY) ports for ultra-fast network data transfer with up to 100 Gigabit per second. The two QSFP28 fibre ports support link aggregation and failover according to IEEE 802.3ad standards to either combine both ports for the highest bandwidth or to make one port take over when the other one fails. Additionally, the IEEE 802.3az standard for energy-efficient ethernet is also supported to save power for networking.

The compact small form factor design of the CASwell NIP-88010 with dimensions of 85x151x16 mm is made possible by the unique state-of-the-art PCI Express 3.0 x16 connector to plug into the network server. PCI Express 3.0 with 16 lanes is needed to provide enough bandwidth for 100-Gigabit-Ethernet because PCIe 3.0 x8 maxes out at 7.9 GByte/s while PCIe x16 offers plenty of headroom with up to 15.8 GByte/s.

This specific connector is shorter than a standard PCI Express x16 slot but still offers the same bandwidth like any PCIe 3.0 x16 connection to provide enough resources for 100-GbE. Furthermore, the specially designed PCI Express slot of CASwell network servers like CAR-5050 and CAR-6010 is also compatible with other CASwell NIP which use PCIe x8. That allows easy upgrading of CASwell network servers first equipped with 10- or 40-GbE NIP adapters to later use 100-Gigabit-Ethernet by simply adding or exchanging the modules with the NIP-88010.

CASwell network devices with the new NIP-88010 adapter for 100-GbE are ideally suited for SD-WAN projects, high-end NFV, data center and cloud server usage.

The CASwell NIP-88010 is available now and can be used in CASwell network server systems with the compatible PCI Express connector. First rackmount models to support the NIP-88010 are the CAR-5050 and the brand new CAR-6010 with future compatible server products coming soon.

Please contact your local CASwell representative or sales for any questions!

More information about the CASwell NIP-88010 can be found here.