What are these hidden network adapters?

Question

What are these two devices listed under Device Manager -> Network Adapters? (they're hidden - show hidden devices in view menu) and why are they there?

1. Microsoft Kernel Debug Network Adapter (not grayed out)
2. WAN Miniport (SSTP) (grayed out)

How do I view the packets travelling these adapters?

Answer 1

Hello,

1. Virtual Network adapter used for remote network debugging.
2. Network adapter driver which is used by VPN with the SSTP protocol to create a VPN tunnel (SSTP - Secure Sockets Tunneling Profile)

Pktmon.exe is a network sniffer included with Windows that you can run to look at network traffic:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/pktmon/pktmon

Darrell

Answer 2

Hi Nobody,

These hidden devices include:

• Devices that have the device node (devnode) status bit DN_NO_SHOW_IN_DM set.
• Devices that are part of a device setup class that is marked as a NoDisplayClass (for example, printers and non-PnP drivers)
• Devices that were physically removed from the computer but whose registry entries weren't deleted (also known as non-present devices or phantom devices). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/viewing-hidden-devices

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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