NDIS Miniport Drivers with a WDM Lower Edge (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 x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6.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.
You can write an NDIS miniport driver that controls a device on a bus--for example, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) or the IEEE 1394 (firewire) bus. Such a miniport driver must expose a standard NDIS miniport driver interface at its upper edge and use the class interface for the particular bus at its lower edge. The miniport driver communicates with devices that are attached to the bus by sending I/O request packets (IRPs) to the bus through its Windows Driver Model (WDM) lower interface.
A miniport driver with a WDM lower edge must be deserialized. For more information about deserialized drivers, see Deserialized NDIS Miniport Drivers.
For more information about miniport drivers with a WDM lower edge, see Miniport Driver with a WDM Lower Interface.