| DRV221: Windows Network Drivers |
This seminar focuses on developing and installing network interface card (NIC) Miniport and Intermediate drivers. Level Intermediate Audience Developers of NDIS miniport or intermediate device drivers for Windows; and hardware engineers for network interface controllers. Description This course covers the latest revisions of Microsoft's Network Device Interface Specification (NDIS). In this seminar, the student will learn how to write two types of network drivers supported by Windows: Intermediate drivers, and NIC miniport drivers. Connectionless and connection-oriented drivers, call managers, call manager clients, and WDM features (Plug and Play, Power Management, and Windows Management and Instrumentation (WMI) are all covered in detail. We will also address the latest NDIS .INF file format and features, including the implementation of notify objects for use with intermediate drivers. Topics Windows Network Architecture and the OSI model Miniport drivers (upper edge) INF Files Connection-oriented features Protocol driver (lower edge) Intermediate drivers Notify objects WDM Features in NDIS 5 ATM in Windows
Prerequisites DRV150, Windows Internals Essentials for Driver Writers, or equivalent knowledge and experience. Attendees should understand the basic principles of demand-paged, virtual memory, multitasking operating systems. Attendees should also be familiar with the concepts of I/O device programming (in other words, driver coding on any other operating system or environment) and must have at least a reading knowledge of the C programming language. Prior experience writing network drivers, implementing network protocols, or writing NT4/WDM kernel mode drivers will be helpful, but is not required. Windows versions Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000 Duration and formats 5 days with labs
3 days lecture only Labs We of course strongly recommend the hands-on labs version of this seminar. As you learn about each driver type in the NDIS network stack, you will test and augment your knowledge by implementing a simplified version of each. First, you will write a NIC Miniport driver and its accompanying .INF file. The addition of a protocol (lower) edge, and merging it with the miniport (upper) edge will produce a simple Intermediate driver. Lastly, you will write a Notify Object DLL to install the Intermediate driver. At the conclusion of the seminar, each student will of course receive fully commented source code for the solutions to all of the lab exercises. |  | Why not just NIC drivers? |  |
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| It's true that most people don't need to write intermediate drivers. However, our experience is that your understanding of miniports will be far far better after learning intermediates, because you will see the miniport in terms of how it interacts with the rest of the stack, rather than as just a "black box." We find over and over that this is time very well spent. | | | What about NDIS 6? | |
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| NDIS version 6 is the next major revision of the Windows network driver architecture; it is included in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. This seminar covers NDIS 5. Please see DRV222, Windows Network Drivers for NDIS 6, if you need to write network drivers for the newer versions of Windows. | |  | |  |
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