Network interface controller
“Network card” redirects here. For the British Rail discount card, see Network Railcard.
Not to be confused with network interface device.Network interface controller
A 1990s Ethernet network interface controller that connects to the motherboard via the now-obsoleteISA bus. This combination card features both aBNC connector (left) for use in (now obsolete)10BASE2 networks and an 8P8C connector (right) for use in 10BASE-T networks.Connects to
Motherboard via one of:
Network via one of:
Token ringSpeeds10 Mbit/s 100 Mbit/s 1 Gbit/s 10 Gbit/s up to 160 Gbit/sCommon manufacturersIntel Realtek Broadcom Marvell Technology Group QLogic Mellanox
A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface,[1] and by similar terms) is acomputer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network.[2]
Early network interface controllers were commonly implemented on expansion cardsthat plugged into a computer bus. The low cost and ubiquity of the Ethernet standard means that most newer computers have a network interface built into the motherboard.
Modern network interface controllers offer advanced features such as interrupt and DMA interfaces to the host processors, support for multiple receive and transmit queues, partitioning into multiple logical interfaces, and on-controller network traffic processing such as the TCP offload engine.
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