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if_ndis(4)

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(9) kernel subsystem to relocate and link the Windows(R) binary so
     that it can be used in conjunction with native code.  The ndisapi(9) sub-
     system provides an interface between the NDIS API and the FreeBSD net-
     working infrastructure.  The Windows(R) driver is essentially fooled into
     thinking 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 ndis_driver_data.h file
     using the ndiscvt(8) utility.  This file contains a binary image of the
     driver plus registry key data.  When the ndis driver loads, it will cre-
     ate 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 there 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

     arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8), ndiscvt(8), ndisapi(9)

     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>.

FreeBSD 5.4		       December 10, 2003		   FreeBSD 5.4

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