Rawether Features And Limitations
Rawether Feature Summary
 | Uniform Win32 API For Access Of NDIS Adapters - A common
Win32 API is used to access NDIS adapters from Win32 on the Windows 95,
Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and
higher platforms. |
| Simple NdisRequest API From Win32 - Making NDIS requests from Win32 is
almost as simple as making them from within a kernel-mode driver. |
| Dynamically Loadable NDIS Protocol Drivers - On the Windows 95, Windows
NT and Windows 2000 and higher platforms supporting NDIS protocol drivers can be dynamically loaded
on demand from the Win32 applications. |
| Network Control Panel Installation - Dynamic loading of the NDIS
protocol driver is not always appropriate. In particular, dynamic binding depends on the
adapters being installed and bound to other protocols such as TCP/IP so that
Rawether can
find them. If it is necessary to install an adapter for the exclusive use of
Rawether,
the PCAUSA NDIS driver can be installed and bound to the adapter in the
"traditional" manner using the Network Control Panel. |
| "Adapter Chooser" Dialog - The NDIScope SDK application
includes code which examines the registry for installed NDIS adapters. An "Adapter
Chooser" dialog displays a list of installed adapters. |
| Multiple Concurrent Adapter Opens - The handle-based
Rawether API
allows the Win32 applications to bind to multiple NDIS adapters concurrently. |
| Performance-Oriented Packet Read Mechanism - The HookPeek application
packet read mechanism and the design of the companion NDIS protocol drivers include the
capability to queue multiple concurrent asynchronous Win32 packet reads and systematically
handle received packets at the Win32 level. |
| BSD Packet Filter (BPF) Filter - The PCAUSA NDIS protocol drivers include PCAUSA's port of the BPF filter pseudo-machine from the Unix environment to Windows. This
provides a general and flexible mechanism for Win32 applications to specify a protocol
filtering "program" which will be executed by the protocol drivers to reject
unwanted packets as early as possible. |
| Packet Time Stamps And Sequence Numbers- The data structure used to
pass received packets from the NDIS protocol drivers to the Win32 application includes a
packet timestamp and a driver assigned sequence number. The latter is intended to be used
to detect when packets are lost because of a lack of resources at the driver level. |
| Other Performance Features - Asynchronous packet I/O using APCs and I/O Completion Ports. |
Rawether
Limitations
| At this time Rawether does NOT
work with RAS/PPP adapters. |
| Dynamically loaded drivers require Administrator privileges on Windows NT
4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and higher platforms. NOTE: This limitation removed in V5.00.13.48. |
| Rawether does not provide the means for more than one Win32 application to receive the same network packet. [ More Information... ] |
The next topic on the Tour describes the Rawether for
Windows
Development Environment.