I saw a review that brought up an excellent question, "Since it bypasses the Windows network stack, how does that affect software firewalls?" The company's answer is that in most cases it doesn't, but that it can for some:
A lot of gamers turn off firewalls when gaming, because they want the performance benefits that can be achieved by turning everything else off other than the game. But for those that choose to run them while gaming, we expect most firewalls will work fine when bypassing the network stack using Killer. For any that don't, we have recently introduced LLR App Mode (with the latest patch that went out on Friday). LLR App Mode is still highly optimized for low latency networking, but without having to bypass the network stack. When a gamer wants to play games, they can switch to LLR Game Mode (without having to reboot) and when not gaming can switch back. We expect that most gamers will stay in LLR Game Mode all the time.
One thing interesting about the Killer NIC is that it has the Linux OS embedded onto it, I guess to do all its bypassing and processing. Well, you can actually somehow access that Linux OS and interact with it via command-line, and the company is even promoting that as a way to make little apps that run on the NIC (something they call "FNApps"), including software firewalls:
On a side note, a firewall would be a great FNApp for our Flexible Network Architecture. If the firewall were running on the Killer, then you could game with a firewall with no impact to your game experience. This is something we are actively supporting our customers and partners on.
Anyway, you can see more of this review here:
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=882
