Miniport Operations (Windows CE 5.0)
Typically, an NDIS miniport driver is a miniport NIC driver. An NDIS miniport driver the following two basic functions:
- Manages a network interface card (NIC), including sending and receiving data through the NIC
- Interfaces with higher-level drivers, such as intermediate drivers and transport protocol drivers
A miniport NIC driver communicates with its NIC and with higher-level drivers through the NDIS library. NDIS library functions export a full set of functions, using the NdisXXX format, that encapsulate all the operating system functions that a miniport needs to call. The miniport, in turn, must export a set of entry points, using the MiniportXXX format or NDIS Driver Upper-Edge Functions, that NDIS calls for its own purposes or on behalf of higher-level drivers to access the miniport.
The following send and receive operations illustrate the interaction of miniport NIC drivers with NDIS and with higher-level drivers:
- When a transport driver has a packet to transmit, it calls an NdisXXXfunction exported by the NDIS library. NDIS then passes the packet to the miniport by calling the appropriate MiniportXXXfunction exported by the miniport. The miniport driver then forwards the packet to the NIC for transmission by calling the appropriate NdisXXX function.
- When a NIC receives a packet addressed to the NIC, it can post a hardware interrupt that is handled by NDIS or the NIC's miniport. NDIS notifies the NIC's miniport by calling the appropriate MiniportXXX function. The miniport sets up the transfer of data from the NIC and then indicates the presence of the received packet to bound higher-level drivers by calling the appropriate NdisXXX function.
See Also
Miniport Drivers | NDIS Driver Upper-Edge Functions
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