How To Access To NIC Drivers
From A Win32 Application

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Developing A Solution

The following steps are involved to develop a framework that allows a common Win32 application to "directly" access NIC drivers on multiple Windows operating systems:

  1. Design, develop and debug the NDIS protocol drivers, since only NDIS protocol drivers can access the top edge of the NDIS Wrapper.
      

  2. Design a uniform software interface that can be used between applications and each of the NDIS protocol drivers.
     

  3. Optionally design and develop "compatibility DLL" that deals with the differences between the OS-specific components (e.g., the different NDIS protocol drivers).

 

Where To Start...

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Documentation

See the Network Drivers section of Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Help Files provided with each of the WDK versions. Each WDK Help File describes a different NDIS version, so you will need to become familiar with each of them.


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Sample NDIS Protocol Drivers

Microsoft provides basic NDIS protocol drivers with the WDKs:
 
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Windows 2000 - See the Windows 2000 DDK "packet driver" sample under the directory:
\W2KDDK\src\network\ndis\packet\driver.
  

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Windows XP and Higher - See the Windows Server 2003 DDK "NDIS Protocol" sample (NDISPROT) under the directory:
\WINDDK\####\src\network\ndis\ndisprot.
 

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Windows Vistaand Higher - See the Windows Vista WDK "NDIS Protocol" sample (NDISPROT) under the directory:
\WINDDK\####\src\network\ndis\ndisprot.
 

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Windows 7 and Higher - See the Windows 7 WDK "NDIS Protocol" sample (NDISPROT) under the directory:
\WINDDK\####\src\network\ndis\ndisprot.

 
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Other Resources

Visit NDIS.com for additional information .

 

The next topic on the Tour describes the Rawether for Windows solution to this problem.

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Last modified: January 01, 2012