PEX10GSFP4I StarTech Intel XL710 10G 4-Port SFP+ Network Interface Card

Highlights of StarTech PEX10GSFP4I Intel XL710 Network Card

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I 10 Gigabit Ethernet Network Interface Card is a high-performance server NIC designed to deliver ultra-fast, stable, and scalable fiber network connectivity. Powered by the advanced Intel XL710 chipset, this PCIe-based network adapter provides reliable 10GbE speeds across four SFP+ ports, making it ideal for enterprise servers, virtualization platforms, cloud computing, and data center environments.

General Information

• Manufacturer: StarTech
• Model Number: PEX10GSFP4I
• Product Category: Server Network Interface Card
• Form Factor: Standard Profile PCIe Card
• Sub-Type: 4-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber NIC

Technical Specifications

• Bus Interface: PCI Express x8
• Chipset: Intel XL710 Controller
• PCIe Version Support: PCI Express Revision 3.0 or higher
• Number of Ports: 4 x SFP+ fiber slots
• Connector Type: PCI Express x8 edge connector
• Network Interface Type: Fiber Optic 10 Gigabit Ethernet

Physical Specifications and Dimensions

Compact and Server-Optimized Design

• Length: 13.9 cm (5.5 inches)
• Width: 1.5 cm (0.6 inches)
• Height: 10.0 cm (3.9 inches)
• Weight: 122 grams (4.3 ounces)
• Profile Type: Standard server-compatible bracket

Industry Compliance and Standards

• IEEE 802.3ae (10GBASE-SR and 10GBASE-LR)
• PCI Express Gen 3.0 specification compliance
• Compatible with modern enterprise and cloud infrastructure

Performance and Network Speed Capabilities

High-Speed Data Transfer and Efficiency

• Maximum Data Transfer Rate: 20 Gbps full-duplex
• Supported Network Speed: 10 Gigabit Ethernet per port
• Duplex Mode: Full-duplex supported
• Jumbo Frame Support: Up to 9K jumbo frames
• Bandwidth Allocation: Total PCIe bandwidth shared across four ports

PCIe Bandwidth Performance Overview

• PCIe Gen 1.0: 2 Gbps per lane maximum throughput
• PCIe Gen 2.0: 4 Gbps per lane maximum throughput
• PCIe Gen 3.0: 8 Gbps per lane maximum throughput
• Total available bandwidth: Up to 64 Gbps shared across all ports

LED Indicators and Monitoring

Visual Network Status Indicators

• 4 x Green LED indicators
• Displays link and network activity status
• Helps administrators monitor connection health easily

Operating System Compatibility

Broad OS and Server Platform Support

• Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11
• Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, and 2022 (64-bit supported)
• Linux kernel 2.6.24 and later LTS versions (64-bit only)
• Compatible with virtualization and enterprise server environments

Environmental and Operating Conditions

Reliable Performance Under Various Conditions

• Operating Temperature: 5°C to 50°C (41°F to 122°F)
• Storage Temperature: -20°C to 60°C (-4°F to 140°F)
• Operating Humidity: 20% to 80% Relative Humidity

Overview of StarTech PEX10GSFP4I 4-Port 10G Network Card

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I Intel XL710 10Gigabit Ethernet 4-Port SFP+ Chip Server Network Interface Card is engineered to deliver enterprise-class networking performance by leveraging the advanced Intel XL710 Ethernet controller, which is part of Intel’s 700 Series networking family designed specifically for high-performance server connectivity, virtualization acceleration, and data center optimization. This controller architecture integrates intelligent hardware offload engines, advanced packet filtering capabilities, and efficient queue management technologies that significantly reduce CPU overhead while ensuring maximum throughput and low-latency data transfer.

PCI Express 3.0 x8 Interface and High-Speed Data Transfer Pathways

The integration of a PCI Express 3.0 x8 interface ensures that the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I network adapter can deliver sufficient bandwidth to support simultaneous full-speed operation across all four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports without performance bottlenecks. The PCIe Gen3 architecture provides high-bandwidth communication between the network adapter and the server’s CPU and memory subsystem, enabling efficient handling of network packets and reducing latency associated with data transfer. The available PCIe bandwidth is distributed efficiently across all ports, ensuring stable throughput and predictable network performance even when multiple applications and virtual machines are generating significant network traffic.

Hardware-Based Traffic Processing and CPU Offload

The Intel XL710 controller includes specialized hardware acceleration engines that significantly reduce CPU utilization by offloading packet processing functions directly to the network adapter. These hardware engines support checksum offloading, TCP segmentation offload, and intelligent packet classification, ensuring that network data is processed efficiently without placing unnecessary load on the server’s processor. This improves overall server performance by allowing CPU resources to focus on application processing rather than network management tasks. The hardware acceleration features are particularly beneficial for enterprise servers hosting virtualization platforms, database systems, and high-performance computing applications that generate large volumes of network traffic.

Enhanced Data Direct I/O and Memory Access

The Intel XL710 controller supports advanced memory access technologies such as Intel Data Direct I/O, which allows network data to be transferred directly to CPU cache and system memory without unnecessary intermediate processing. This capability reduces latency, improves throughput, and enhances overall system responsiveness. The efficient memory access architecture ensures that network operations can be performed quickly and efficiently, supporting real-time applications, cloud workloads, and large-scale enterprise deployments where fast and reliable network communication is critical. :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

Quad-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ Connectivity and Network

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I network interface card features four independent 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ ports, providing exceptional flexibility and scalability for enterprise network deployments. Each port supports full-duplex communication, enabling simultaneous transmission and reception of data at speeds up to 10 Gbps per port, resulting in a combined potential bandwidth of up to 40 Gbps across all ports. This multi-port configuration allows network administrators to implement link aggregation, load balancing, and failover strategies that enhance network reliability and performance. The use of SFP+ ports provides flexibility in choosing compatible fiber optic transceivers or direct attach cables, enabling organizations to deploy network connections over varying distances using multimode or single-mode fiber.

Fiber Optic Networking Advantages and Signal Integrity

The use of fiber optic connectivity provides significant advantages over traditional copper Ethernet connections, including reduced electromagnetic interference, improved signal integrity, and support for longer transmission distances. Fiber optic connections enable reliable high-speed communication across large data center environments, ensuring consistent performance and minimizing data loss. The adapter’s compatibility with industry-standard SFP+ modules ensures seamless integration with existing network infrastructure, allowing organizations to upgrade their network capabilities without replacing existing switches or cabling systems. This compatibility simplifies deployment and reduces infrastructure costs while providing a clear path for future network expansion.

Cloud Infrastructure

The Intel XL710 controller integrated into the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I adapter includes advanced virtualization technologies that enhance performance and efficiency in virtualized server environments. The controller supports Single Root I/O Virtualization, enabling multiple virtual machines to share a single physical network interface while maintaining secure and independent communication channels. This capability improves resource utilization and reduces infrastructure costs by eliminating the need for dedicated network adapters for each virtual machine. The adapter also supports advanced network virtualization protocols such as VXLAN, NVGRE, and Geneve, enabling efficient network segmentation and isolation in multi-tenant cloud environments

Network Function and Software-Defined Networking

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I adapter is designed to support modern software-defined networking and network function virtualization architectures. The adapter’s hardware acceleration capabilities enable efficient processing of virtual network functions such as firewalls, load balancers, and intrusion detection systems. This support for network function virtualization enables organizations to deploy flexible and scalable network infrastructure without relying on dedicated hardware appliances. The adapter’s compatibility with Data Plane Development Kit drivers ensures high-performance packet processing and low-latency communication, making it suitable for demanding network applications such as telecommunications infrastructure, edge computing, and distributed data processing environments.

Storage Networking and Data Center Fabric Integration

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I network adapter provides reliable connectivity for enterprise storage networks, supporting storage protocols such as iSCSI and NFS. These protocols enable efficient communication between servers and storage devices, ensuring fast data access and reliable storage operations. The adapter’s support for jumbo frames allows larger data packets to be transmitted efficiently, reducing network overhead and improving storage performance. This capability is particularly beneficial for storage-intensive applications such as database management, backup operations, and data replication. The adapter’s advanced traffic management features ensure consistent performance across storage and application workloads, enhancing overall system efficiency and reliability.

Priority Flow Control and Data Center Bridging Support

The adapter supports Data Center Bridging and priority flow control technologies, which ensure efficient traffic management and prevent network congestion. These features enable network administrators to prioritize critical traffic, ensuring consistent performance for mission-critical applications. The support for VLAN tagging and quality of service mechanisms allows organizations to implement secure and efficient network segmentation, enhancing both performance and security.

Enterprise Reliability and Long-Term Deployment Stability

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I network interface card is engineered with enterprise-grade components and advanced thermal management systems to ensure reliable operation under continuous workloads. The adapter features an optimized heatsink design that dissipates heat efficiently, maintaining stable operating temperatures even in high-density server environments. The use of high-quality components ensures long-term reliability and consistent performance, making the adapter suitable for mission-critical enterprise applications. The adapter’s efficient power consumption and robust construction ensure reliable operation while minimizing energy costs and reducing heat generation within the server chassis.

Enterprise Operating Systems and Server Platforms

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I adapter is compatible with a wide range of enterprise operating systems, including Windows Server, Linux distributions, and VMware ESXi, ensuring flexible deployment across diverse server environments. This broad compatibility allows organizations to integrate the adapter seamlessly into existing infrastructure without requiring significant configuration changes. The adapter also supports PXE boot functionality, enabling servers to boot directly from network storage, which simplifies system deployment and management. This compatibility ensures that the adapter can be used in various enterprise scenarios, including cloud computing, virtualization clusters, and data center deployments. :contentReference[oaicite:10]{index=10}

Scalable Network and Future-Proof Deployment Capability

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I Intel XL710 network adapter provides scalable networking capabilities that support evolving enterprise infrastructure requirements. The adapter’s support for high-speed fiber connectivity, virtualization acceleration, and advanced traffic management ensures that organizations can expand their network infrastructure without replacing existing hardware. The flexible design allows for seamless integration into new and existing data center environments, supporting future network expansion and technology upgrades. The adapter’s enterprise-grade performance, reliability, and scalability make it a critical component for modern data center and enterprise networking infrastructure, ensuring long-term operational efficiency and performance.

Data Center Throughput and 40Gb Bandwidth Capability

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I Intel XL710 10Gigabit Ethernet 4-Port SFP+ Chip Server Network Interface Card is engineered to deliver a combined aggregate bandwidth of up to 40Gbps across four independent 10GbE ports, making it a powerful solution for high-density enterprise and data center deployments. Each SFP+ interface operates at full 10 Gigabit speeds with full-duplex communication, ensuring simultaneous high-speed transmission and reception without packet collision or throughput degradation. This aggregate bandwidth capacity allows the adapter to support large-scale east-west traffic in virtualized environments, distributed database clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and high-availability application platforms. In modern data centers where microservices architectures and containerized workloads generate significant internal traffic, this quad-port 10GbE adapter ensures that network infrastructure does not become a bottleneck.

Traffic and Containerized Workloads

In highly virtualized and container-driven infrastructures, east-west traffic between servers often exceeds north-south traffic to external networks. The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I adapter is designed to efficiently manage this internal data center communication by leveraging advanced queue management and traffic steering capabilities built into the Intel XL710 controller. Receive Side Scaling distributes incoming traffic across multiple CPU cores, improving parallel processing efficiency and reducing packet processing latency. The multi-queue architecture ensures that simultaneous workloads do not interfere with each other, maintaining consistent throughput even when thousands of virtual network interfaces are active.

Advanced Network and Overlay Protocol Acceleration

The Intel XL710 controller integrated within the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I NIC supports advanced overlay network acceleration technologies including VXLAN, NVGRE, and Geneve offloads, enabling efficient operation in software-defined networking environments. Overlay networks are essential in cloud and multi-tenant infrastructures where logical network segmentation must be implemented without relying solely on physical separation. By offloading encapsulation and decapsulation tasks directly to hardware, the adapter significantly reduces CPU overhead associated with overlay processing. This results in improved performance for virtual switches and distributed network architectures. The hardware-based support for these protocols ensures that network virtualization can scale efficiently while maintaining low latency and high throughput. This capability enables enterprises to deploy flexible and secure network fabrics that support workload mobility, multi-tenant isolation, and dynamic provisioning.

SR-IOV and Direct Path I/O for Virtual Machine Performance Enhancement

Single Root I/O Virtualization support allows the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I to expose multiple virtual functions directly to virtual machines, enabling near-native network performance within virtualized environments. By bypassing the hypervisor networking stack, SR-IOV reduces latency and improves throughput for network-intensive workloads such as database replication, financial transaction processing, and distributed analytics. This direct path I/O capability enhances performance predictability and minimizes jitter, which is critical for applications requiring consistent low-latency communication. The Intel XL710 architecture ensures secure isolation between virtual functions, maintaining data integrity while enabling efficient resource sharing. This virtualization acceleration is particularly valuable in enterprise cloud deployments where performance consistency and scalability are essential.

High-Availability Networking and Link Aggregation Strategies

The quad-port configuration of the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I enables advanced link aggregation and high-availability network designs. By combining multiple ports using Link Aggregation Control Protocol, organizations can create logical bonded interfaces that increase bandwidth and provide redundancy. In failover scenarios, traffic can be automatically rerouted to active links without disrupting application connectivity. This capability enhances business continuity by minimizing downtime and ensuring uninterrupted service availability. The adapter supports adaptive load balancing techniques that distribute traffic dynamically across available links, preventing congestion and optimizing performance. These features are critical in mission-critical environments such as financial services and enterprise resource planning platforms where network downtime can result in significant operational impact.

Failover Mechanisms and Redundant Network Path Implementation

Redundancy is a fundamental requirement in enterprise networking, and the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I provides hardware-level failover capabilities that ensure continuous connectivity. If one physical port experiences disruption due to cable failure, switch malfunction, or maintenance activities, the network interface can redirect traffic to alternate ports seamlessly. This redundancy mechanism ensures high uptime and consistent application performance. When integrated with redundant switching infrastructure and multipath routing configurations, the adapter becomes part of a resilient network architecture designed to eliminate single points of failure. This reliability makes it suitable for data center core networking, virtualization hosts, and high-density server racks where uptime is a primary operational priority.

Storage Networking Acceleration

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I supports jumbo frame transmission, enabling larger packet sizes that reduce protocol overhead and improve efficiency in storage networking environments. For storage protocols such as iSCSI and NFS, jumbo frame support enhances throughput by minimizing the number of frames required to transfer large data sets. This optimization reduces CPU interrupts and improves overall storage performance. In environments utilizing software-defined storage or hyper-converged infrastructure, the high bandwidth and low latency of the quad-port 10GbE adapter ensure rapid data replication and synchronization between nodes. This capability supports high-speed backup operations, real-time data analytics, and distributed file systems where consistent performance is critical.

Data Center Bridging and Lossless Ethernet

Support for Data Center Bridging features enhances the adapter’s ability to operate in converged network environments where storage and data traffic share the same physical infrastructure. Priority Flow Control mechanisms prevent packet loss during congestion by temporarily pausing specific traffic classes, ensuring reliable delivery of critical workloads. Enhanced Transmission Selection allows bandwidth allocation among traffic classes, optimizing performance for mixed workloads. These features enable the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I to function effectively within modern converged data center architectures that demand both flexibility and reliability.

Operating System and Deployment Flexibility

Broad operating system compatibility ensures seamless integration of the StarTech PEX10GSFP4I into diverse server environments. The adapter supports major enterprise operating systems including Windows Server editions, multiple Linux distributions, and leading hypervisors such as VMware ESXi. This compatibility simplifies deployment and allows organizations to standardize network hardware across heterogeneous infrastructures. PXE boot support enables remote system provisioning and automated deployment workflows, streamlining large-scale server rollouts. The flexible SFP+ interface further enhances deployment options by allowing administrators to select appropriate transceivers based on required distance and fiber type.

Infrastructure and Scalability for Growing Enterprise Networks

The StarTech PEX10GSFP4I Intel XL710 10Gigabit Ethernet 4-Port SFP+ Server Network Interface Card provides a scalable foundation for evolving enterprise networking requirements. As organizations expand their digital services, cloud capabilities, and data processing workloads, the demand for high-speed, reliable connectivity continues to increase. The quad-port 10GbE architecture supports incremental network expansion by enabling additional aggregated bandwidth without replacing