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New Dual GigE driver doubles data rate on Windows 10

13 March 2017 – Technology
New Dual GigE driver doubles data rate on Windows 10

Bandwidth is a never ending story with GigE Vision. Intel has released a new network driver supporting the teaming of network ports on Windows 10.

Ethernet data rate is the limit

Imaging sensor become faster and larger in size. Manufacturers are trying a lot to get higher data rates to be able to deliver the data. Dual GigE provides an standardized procedure by teaming two network ports together, thus doubling the data transfer rate. This procedure is independent from any manufacturer and is still keeping the benefits of GigE as there are long cables and flexible routing - no other interface can compete here.

Dual GigE on different operating systems

The procedure, called "ethernet teaming", will put 2 ethernet ports together. Overhead is pretty small. Cameras with Dual GigE ports thus will be able to deliver double data rate.

Especially the high resolution EVO industrial camera with Dual GigE ports and the HR series like the HR29 are benefitting from higher bandwidth.

Ethernet teaming works on operating system level and is independent of any propriety manufacturer. On Linux, macOS and Windows configuration is done without special software.

Microsoft and Intel did not offer Dual GigE support since latest release of windows 10. The new driver, released in February, seems to work quite well. Tests with current versions of Dual GigE cameras from SVS-Vistek like HR16070 showed a maximum bandwidth of 190MB/s with the network card and the host system as limiting factor.

Only latest network cards supported

The driver will work for the latest network cards like i210 and i350 from Intel. The older cards like Intel Pro 100 GT T2 or Gigabit ET Quad Port T4 are apparently not supported, driver installation will fail.

This is the download:

Intel Download Center

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