NDIS / Network Device Interface Specification for Not Yet Techies

"Computer Careers: Using This Microsoft Specification for How Communication Protocols Should Share Data With Network Device Drivers"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

NDIS / Network Device Interface Specification is a specification developed by Microsoft and 3Com for Windows for how communication protocol programs should communicate with network device drivers. It resides between the NIC / Network Interface Card (or MAC / Media Access Control) driver and the protocol stack in the Data Link layer of the OSI Reference Model. NDIS / Network Device Interface Specification has a program called the Protocol Manager that assists the protocol stack program and MAC driver program tell each other their locations.

NDIS / Network Device Interface Specification has a similar interface called Open Data-Link Interface (ODI) that is used by Novell NetWare.

This technology NDIS / Network Device Interface Specification allows for the binding of multiple NDIS-compliant network cards to one protocol stack or multiple protocols on a single NIC

Or it binds multiple protocols to multiple NICs.

When the Protocol Manager connects the protocol stack program and the MAC driver program that is called a bind. A system file called PROTOCOL.INI tracks which protocols stacks use which MAC device drivers.

Thanks to NDIS / Network Device Interface Specification, Windows software program developers can create protocol stacks that work with the MAC driver for any hardware communications adapter.

Next: NetBEUI

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