Share via

Differences Between NDIS WAN and Non-WAN Connectionless Miniport Drivers (NDIS 5.1)

  • Article

Note   NDIS 5. x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6. x. For new NDIS driver development, see Network Drivers Starting with Windows Vista. For information about porting NDIS 5. x drivers to NDIS 6. x, see Porting NDIS 5.x Drivers to NDIS 6.0.

An NDIS WAN miniport driver differs from a non-WAN connectionless miniport driver as follows:

  • An NDIS WAN miniport driver must not register a MiniportTransferData handler with NdisMRegisterMiniport. Instead, a WAN miniport driver always passes an entire packet to the NdisMWanIndicateReceive function. After NdisMWanIndicateReceive returns, the packet has been copied and the WAN miniport driver can reuse the packet resources.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers provide a MiniportWanSend function instead of a MiniportSend function.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers never return NDIS_STATUS_RESOURCES as the status of a send operation or any other MiniportXxx function, and cannot call NdisMSendResourcesAvailable.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers support a set of WAN-specific OIDs to set and query operating characteristics. For more information about WAN-specific OIDs, see Standard WAN Objects.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers that provide TAPI services support a set of TAPI OIDs to set and query operating characteristics. For more information about TAPI OIDs, see TAPI Objects.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers support a set of WAN-specific status indications that indicate changes in the status of a link. For more information about WAN status indications, see Indicating NDIS WAN Miniport Driver Status.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers call WAN-specific NDIS functions to complete send and receive operations. The two completion calls are:

    NdisMWanIndicateReceiveComplete

    NdisMWanSendComplete

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers use an NDIS_WAN_PACKET instead of an NDIS_PACKET descriptor.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers keep a WAN-specific set of statistics. The OID_WAN_GET_STATS_INFO OID requests the miniport driver to return the statistics information.

  • NDIS WAN miniport drivers never attempt to loop back any packets; NDISWAN provides loop-back support.

 

 

Send comments about this topic to Microsoft