Rawether for Windows V5.5.17.00
Information
New In Release V5.5.17.00 (May 17, 2004)
This is a new major release of Rawether for Windows - the first since the
release of V5.0 in December, 1998.
Compatibility with Prior Rawether Versions
Although there are some fairly significant changes to the Rawether runtime
components, one goal has been to preserve compatibility with applications built
using the prior Rawether V5.0 framework. We believe that most existing
applications based on Rawether V5.0 can be adapted to use this new release by
simply recompiling with the new headers and linking with the new Rawether DLL
import library.
Eliminate Side-By-Side Rawether Runtime Installation Conflicts
Because of the wide acceptance and distribution of Rawether it is not
uncommon to encounter situations where multiple Rawether-based applications are
concurrently installed on a workstation. Unfortunately, prior versions of
Rawether did not adequately support side-by-side runtime component installation
and conflicts sometime occur. A major goal of this release is to address this issue.
The preferred way to resolve side-by-side runtime component conflicts is to
rebuild the Rawether runtime components (DLL and drivers) using OEM-specific
internal and external names and OEM copyright. However, not all PCAUSA customers
have in-house resources needed to build an OEM version of these components.
Changes made in this release provide a way to create renamed versions
of the Rawether Windows NT and higher NDIS protocol drivers (but NOT Windows
9X/ME drivers...) by simply renaming the driver .sys file and placing the
renamed driver in the System32\Drivers folder; this eliminates Rawether driver
conflicts. The Rawether DLL is moved to the OEM's Program Files folder instead
of the System32 folder; this eliminates Rawether DLL conflicts.
The final piece of the conflict resolution mechanism is use of an
initialization file located in the OEM's Program Files folder . The
initialization file contains the OEM's names of the renamed Rawether drivers and
other OEM-specific information. Information in the initialization file is used
to insure that the DLL calls the OEM's copy of the Rawether NDIS protocol
drivers.
Expanded Support for 802.11 Adapter Management
Rawether V5.0 has been widely used by wireless adapter vendors and wireless
service vendors to manage 802.11 adapters. This release provides additional
built-in support for 802.11 management operations.
Support For Windows XP 64-Bit Extended Edition
This release adds support for Windows XP 64-Bit
Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems (AMD64). Rawether supports both 32-bit and
64-bit applications on AMD64. In fact, the same 32-bit Rawether application
can run on all Windows platforms from Windows 95 through Windows XP 64-bit
Edition.
 Rawether does NOT currently support
Intel ia64 (Itanium) 64-bit platforms. Overhaul of Rawether Win32 NDIS DLL
As part of this release the Rawether DLL has been fairly extensively
overhauled. Redundant and deprecated code has been removed and important
warnings uncovered by the more recent compilers have been addressed. Additional
DLL modifications were made, including:
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Added 802.11 Helper Functions - As mentioned
above.
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Added Service Control Manager (SCM) Support Functions
- Used to control Rawether drivers and the Microsoft Wireless Zero Configuration
(WZC) service.
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Changed DLL Export Conventions from _cdecl to WINAPI
- Simplifies interfacing the Win32 NDIS API to C#, Visual Basic .NET and
certain Borland languages. As a consequence the Rawether VBW32N_XYZ API family
is no longer needed and has been eliminated.
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Various Driver Improvements
Including some small changes that may improve the efficiency of the
multi-packet read driver. Improved reference counting associated with handling
NDIS requests.
Various Improvements to Packet Collection Applications
Some improvements in detecting shutdown situations have been added to the
packet collection application samples.
Rawether Runtime Component Name Changes
Of course, one of the more noticeable changes associated with this release is
the changes in the stock names of the Rawether runtime components.
Click here to see the V5.5 component
names.
These name changes can also be seen in the
Rawether V5.5 simplified block diagram.
Rawether Application Build Environment
With this release Rawether finally abandons the legacy Microsoft Visual C++
6.0 development environment and moves to Microsoft Visual Studio
.NET 2003. There is some work involved in making this transition because the
more recent compilers catch errors that went unnoticed in the older environment.
PCAUSA had to systematically resolve a few new warnings. If you haven't made
this move yourself, then the newer compiler will probably uncover some
previously undiscovered problems in your own code.
See Detailed Release Notes.
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