Network Driver Interface Specification
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The Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) is an application programming interface (API) for network interface cards (NICs). It was jointly developed by Microsoft and 3Com Corporation, and is mostly used in Microsoft Windows on Intel-based computers, but the open-source ndiswrapper project allows many NDIS-compliant NICs to be used with Linux. yellowTAB Zeta, a derivative of BeOS, is also expected to support NDIS drivers in its first major release.
The NDIS is a Logical Link Control (LLC) that forms the upper sublayer of the OSI data link layer (layer 2 of 7) and acts as an interface between layer 2 and 3 (the Network Layer). The lower sublayer is the Media Access Control (MAC) device driver.
The NDIS is a library of functions often referred to as a "wrapper" that hides the underlying complexity of the NIC hardware and serves as a standard interface for level 3 network protocol drivers and the hardware level MAC drivers. Another common LLC is the Open Data-Link Interface (ODI).
See also
- Open Data-Link Interface (ODI)
- Uniform Driver Interface (UDI)