Single-Packet Sends (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 x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6.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.
Connectionless miniport drivers, both serialized and deserialized, can have a MiniportSendfunction for transmitting a single packet through the NIC onto the network. MiniportSendtranslates the packet into a data frame and carries out the send operation.
If MiniportSendcompletes the send operation before returning, it returns a status code other than NDIS_STATUS_PENDING or NDIS_STATUS_RESOURCES. Completing the send operation means that the miniport driver is finished with the packet descriptor and the resources that it describes and is returning it to the caller for reuse or to be freed.
In the asynchronous case, the miniport driver returns NDIS_STATUS_PENDING and must call NdisMSendCompletewhen it is done with the packet to indicate that it is relinquishing the packet for reuse or to be freed.
A serialized miniport driver can return NDIS_STATUS_RESOURCES to indicate that it does not have enough internal resources to transmit a packet. In this case, NDIS queues the returned packet descriptor internally and resubmits it to the NIC driver when more resources are available, either when the miniport driver calls NdisMSendCompleteor NdisMSendResourcesAvailable, whichever occurs first.
When a serialized miniport driver calls NdisMSendCompleteor NdisMSendResourcesAvailable, it indicates to NDIS that send resources are available and the miniport driver is ready to accept a new packet descriptor.
For a detailed description of single-packet sends from connectionless miniport drivers, see Single-Packet Sends from Connectionless Miniport Drivers.