Differences Between NDIS WAN and Non-WAN Connectionless Miniport Drivers (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 x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6.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.
An NDIS WAN miniport driver differs from a non-WAN connectionless miniport driver as follows:
An NDIS WAN miniport driver must not register a MiniportTransferData handler with NdisMRegisterMiniport. Instead, a WAN miniport driver always passes an entire packet to the NdisMWanIndicateReceive function. After NdisMWanIndicateReceive returns, the packet has been copied and the WAN miniport driver can reuse the packet resources.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers provide a MiniportWanSend function instead of a MiniportSend function.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers never return NDIS_STATUS_RESOURCES as the status of a send operation or any other MiniportXxx function, and cannot call NdisMSendResourcesAvailable.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers support a set of WAN-specific OIDs to set and query operating characteristics. For more information about WAN-specific OIDs, see Standard WAN Objects.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers that provide TAPI services support a set of TAPI OIDs to set and query operating characteristics. For more information about TAPI OIDs, see TAPI Objects.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers support a set of WAN-specific status indications that indicate changes in the status of a link. For more information about WAN status indications, see Indicating NDIS WAN Miniport Driver Status.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers call WAN-specific NDIS functions to complete send and receive operations. The two completion calls are:
NDIS WAN miniport drivers use an NDIS_WAN_PACKET instead of an NDIS_PACKET descriptor.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers keep a WAN-specific set of statistics. The OID_WAN_GET_STATS_INFO OID requests the miniport driver to return the statistics information.
NDIS WAN miniport drivers never attempt to loop back any packets; NDISWAN provides loop-back support.