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NDIS(4) 	      DragonFly 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 DragonFly.  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 DragonFly network-
     ing infrastructure.  The Windows(R) driver is essentially fooled into
     thinking it is running on Windows(R).

     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, PCMCIA and USB 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 con-
     sistent 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 registry keys to control the media setting which can be config-
     ured 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

     altq(4), arp(4), ifmedia(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), wlan(4),
     ifconfig(8), ndis_events(8), ndiscvt(8), ndisgen(8), wpa_supplicant(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 <wpaul@windriver.com>.

DragonFly 5.5			 May 10, 2011			 DragonFly 5.5

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