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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 subsys-
     tem provides an interface between the NDIS	API and	the FreeBSD networking
     infrastructure.  The Windows(R) driver is essentially fooled into think-
     ing 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 identi-
     fiers.  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 net-
     work 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 con-
     sistent 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 config-
     ured 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

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS

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