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ndis
NDIS(4) FreeBSD/i386 Kernel Interfaces Manual NDIS(4)
NAME
ndis -- NDIS miniport driver wrapper
SYNOPSIS
options NDISAPI
device ndis
device wlan
DESCRIPTION
The ndis driver is a wrapper designed to allow binary Windows(R) NDIS
miniport network drivers to be used with FreeBSD. The ndis driver is
provided in source code form and must be combined with the Windows(R)
driver supplied with your network adapter. The ndis driver uses the
ndisapi kernel subsystem to relocate and link the Windows(R) binary so
that it can be used in conjunction with native code. The ndisapi subsys-
tem provides an interface between the NDIS API and the FreeBSD networking
infrastructure. The Windows(R) driver is essentially fooled into think-
ing it is running on Windows(R). Note that this means the ndis driver is
only useful on x86 machines.
To build a functional driver, the user must have a copy of the driver
distribution media for his or her card. From this distribution, the user
must extract two files: the .SYS file containing the driver binary code,
and its companion .INF file, which contains the definitions for driver-
specific registry keys and other installation data such as device identi-
fiers. These two files can be converted into a kernel module file using
the ndisgen(8) utility. This file contains a binary image of the driver
plus registry key data. When the ndis driver loads, it will create
sysctl(3) nodes for each registry key extracted from the .INF file.
The ndis driver is designed to support mainly Ethernet and wireless net-
work devices with PCI and PCMCIA bus attachments. (Cardbus devices are
also supported as a subset of PCI.) It can support many different media
types and speeds. One limitation however, is that there is no consistent
way to learn if an Ethernet device is operating in full or half duplex
mode. The NDIS API allows for a generic means for determining link state
and speed, but not the duplex setting. There may be driver-specific reg-
istry keys to control the media setting which can be configured via the
sysctl(8) command.
DIAGNOSTICS
ndis%d: watchdog timeout A packet was queued for transmission and a
transmit command was issued, however the device failed to acknowledge the
transmission before a timeout expired.
SEE ALSO
arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8), ndiscvt(8), ndisgen(8)
NDIS 5.1 specification, http://www.microsoft.com.
HISTORY
The ndis device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.
AUTHORS
The ndis driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaulATwindriver.com>.
FreeBSD 6.2 October 13, 2006 FreeBSD 6.2
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