NDIS(4)                                                    BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                                                    NDIS(4)

NAME

     ndis -- NDIS miniport driver wrapper

SYNOPSIS

     options NDISAPI
     device ndis
     device wlan

DESCRIPTION

     The ndis driver is a wrapper designed to allow binary Windows(R) NDIS miniport network drivers to be used with FreeBSD.  The ndis driver is
     provided in source code form and must be combined with the Windows(R) driver supplied with your network adapter.  The ndis driver uses the
     ndisapi kernel subsystem to relocate and link the Windows(R) binary so that it can be used in conjunction with native code.  The ndisapi sub-
     system provides an interface between the NDIS API and the FreeBSD networking infrastructure.  The Windows(R) driver is essentially fooled
     into thinking it is running on Windows(R).  Note that this means the ndis driver is only useful on x86 machines.

     To build a functional driver, the user must have a copy of the driver distribution media for his or her card.  From this distribution, the
     user must extract two files: the .SYS file containing the driver binary code, and its companion .INF file, which contains the definitions for
     driver-specific registry keys and other installation data such as device identifiers.  These two files can be converted into a kernel module
     file using the ndisgen(8) utility.  This file contains a binary image of the driver plus registry key data.  When the ndis driver loads, it
     will create sysctl(3) nodes for each registry key extracted from the .INF file.

     The ndis driver is designed to support mainly Ethernet and wireless network devices with PCI, PCMCIA and USB bus attachments.  (Cardbus
     devices are also supported as a subset of PCI.)  It can support many different media types and speeds.  One limitation however, is that there
     is no consistent way to learn if an Ethernet device is operating in full or half duplex mode.  The NDIS API allows for a generic means for
     determining link state and speed, but not the duplex setting.  There may be driver-specific registry keys to control the media setting which
     can be configured via the sysctl(8) command.

DIAGNOSTICS

     ndis%d: watchdog timeout  A packet was queued for transmission and a transmit command was issued, however the device failed to acknowledge
     the transmission before a timeout expired.

SEE ALSO

     altq(4), arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8), ndis_events(8), ndiscvt(8), ndisgen(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

     NDIS 5.1 specification, http://www.microsoft.com.

HISTORY

     The ndis device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS

     The ndis driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@windriver.com>.

BSD                                                               March 14, 2010                                                               BSD