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Supporting Header-Data Split in Protocol Drivers and Filter Drivers

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NDIS 6.0 and later protocol drivers and filter drivers must support receive indications with the header and data in non-contiguous buffers.

You must not assume that there is only a single MDL in a NET_BUFFER structure. Protocol drivers and filter drivers are not required to do anything specific to support header-data split registration. But, the driver receive handling code must handle more than one MDL in the MDL chain and must use the following NDIS MDL macros to access the MDL chain:

With split buffers, the data length that is associated with the NET_BUFFER structure (in the DataLength member of the NET_BUFFER_DATA structure) is split across multiple MDLs. For example, if a protocol driver tried to access the entire data buffer in the first MDL, the driver could access invalid data.

Note  After the receive indication call returns to a miniport driver, the miniport driver can reclaim the header MDLs. The overlying drivers or their clients must not access the header MDLs after the receive indication call returns to the miniport driver. This restriction also applies even when the miniport driver is not indicating the received data with a status of NDIS_RECEIVE_FLAGS_RESOURCES.