introduction 1-1
CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION Congratulations on your purchase of the NETGEAR®GA621Fiber Gigabit Ethernet
Card.Designed especially for high-performance systems,such as servers and high-end
workstations,it offers 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) of aggregate bandwidth and opti-
mized performance while minimizing network overhead on the host system.This guide
describes the installation and use of the GA621 for operation within a Microsoft®
Windows®95OSR2,Windows®98,Windows®NT,Windows®2000,Windows®Me,
Novell®NetWare,or Red Hat®Linux environment.
This chapter provides information about the features of the GA621.It connec ts
your PCI-compliant server or workstation to a Gigabit Ethernet network,incorporat-
ing a new technology that transfers data at a rate of 1 Gbps or 1000 megabits per
second (Mbps) over 62.5/125 or 50/125 Micron multimode fiber with SC
connectors.
Benefits
Performance is optimized and network overhead on the host system is minimized
with the use of the GA621 Fiber Gigabit Ethernet Card.
The GA621 has demonstrated interoperability with all major Gigabit Ethernet equip-
ment on the market that is compliant with IEEE 802.3z standards.In addition,
because the GA621 uses standard Ethernet frame and Media Access Control (MAC)
formats,
it provides full compatibility with Fast Ethernet network equipment through network
switches from a variety of vendors,including NETGEAR.
Features
The key features of the GA621 Fiber Gigabit Ethernet Card are:
• Full-duplex operation (2,000 Mbps:1,000 Mbps each way) with DMA (Direct
Memory Access) Gigabit Ethernet interface (IEEE 802.3z)