Windows Protocols

The Windows Protocols documentation provides detailed technical specifications for protocols used by the Windows client operating system and Windows Servers to communicate with other Microsoft products.

The Windows protocols documentation set contains the following types of documents:

• Overview Documents – These illustrate how Windows protocols that are functionally related work together, with practical examples that demonstrate common usage scenarios. The overview documents are a good starting point to understand which technical specifications you will need to refer to for your implementation.

• Technical Documents – These specify the protocols in detail as they are used by products communicating with Windows. Each protocol specification documents the technical requirements, limitations, dependencies, and product-specific protocol behavior.

• References – These provide technical reference information, such as common data types and error codes.

In addition to being available on this website, the Windows Protocols documentation set is also available as a download package in .zip file format:

• Windows Protocol Documentation

  Note  Inter-document links are functional only if all PDF files are located in the same directory. An error message will appear if you click on a link to a document that is in a different folder.

Windows Blue Preview release

For the Windows Blue Preview release, all new and changed Windows protocols documentation are available in PDF format on MSDN. The Preview Specifications page on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee941641.aspx) describes the new and changed protocol documents for this release, and includes links to those documents. For Windows Blue RTM, all Windows protocols documentation will be made available as Web content on MSDN in addition to PDF format.

More Information

For more information on these protocols, please visit Microsoft Open Specifications.

Questions

If you have questions about the protocol documentation, please visit the Open Specifications Forums on MSDN.