[ros-dev] NDIS 6

[Filip Navara]

Aliberti Emanuele wrote:

> Filip Navara wrote:
>
>> I have read the WHDC papers about NDIS 6 and in fact the major 
>> changes are
>> - Minor extensions to miniport interface (as in every NDIS version 
>> before). This includes some added *Ex functions and now 
>> NdisMRegisterMiniportDriver function that overcomes 
>> NdisMInitializeWrapper+NdisMRegisterMiniport combo.
>> - Native support for IEEE 802.11a/b.
>> - Net buffers (a technology to manage packet pools used by miniports 
>> and IM drivers).
>
I forgot to metion:
- Lightwight filters - a replacement for NDIS IM drivers (this might be 
backported to NDIS 5.1, but I haven't heard any official info about it.)
- New Scatter/Gather DMA API (not that interesting, but worth mentioning)

> They say using NDIS 5 drivers will be possible, but at the cost of 
> minor performance.

I'm a bit sceptic about the MS performance claims. A well-written 
optimized NDIS 5 driver would propably perform just as good as a similar 
NDIS 6 miniport driver. It's just easier to use the net buffers than 
doing all the stuff in miniports.

> Does it mean those net buffers can not be used by NDIS 5 drivers?

The net buffers API are currently available only on NDIS 6 and most 
propably will not be backported.

Regards,
Filip