Network OIDs (NDIS 5.1)
Note NDIS 5. x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6. x. For new NDIS driver development, see Network Drivers Starting with Windows Vista. For information about porting NDIS 5. x drivers to NDIS 6. x, see Porting NDIS 5.x Drivers to NDIS 6.0.
A miniport driver maintains information about its capabilities and current status, as well as information about each NIC that it controls. Each information type is identified by an object identifier (OID). OIDs are system-defined.
NDIS and higher level drivers can query and, in some cases, set information using OIDs.
Higher level drivers for connectionless media call NdisRequest to query or set information in a connectionless miniport driver. To perform a query operation, NDIS calls the miniport driver's MiniportQueryInformation function. To perform a set operation, NDIS calls the miniport driver's MiniportSetInformation function.
Higher level drivers for connection-oriented media call NdisCoRequest to query or set information in a connection-oriented miniport driver. To perform both query and set operations, NDIS calls the miniport driver's MiniportCoRequest function.
NDIS maps many of the system-defined OIDs for miniport drivers to globally unique identifiers (GUIDs). NDIS registers these GUIDs with the kernel-mode Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) that supports user-mode Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) applications. When a WMI client queries or sets one of these GUIDs, NDIS translates the request to a query OID operation or a set OID operation, as appropriate, and then passes any returned information and the status back to WMI. Driver writers can map custom GUIDs to custom OIDs or miniport driver status. A miniport driver must register custom GUID-to-OID or GUID-to-status mappings with NDIS during initialization.
For more information about querying and setting OIDs, creating custom OIDs, and NDIS support for WMI, see Obtaining and Setting Miniport Driver Information and NDIS Support for WMI.