Network Device Interface Specification
<networking, hardware, standard> (NDIS) A Microsoft Windows device driver programming interface allowing multiple protocols to share the same
network hardware. E.g.
TCP/IP and
IPX on the same
NIC.
NDIS can also be used by some ISDN adapters.
A protocol manager accepts requests from the
transport layer and passes them to the
data link layer (routed to the correct network interface if there is more than one).
NDIS was developed by
Microsoft and 3COM.
Novell offers a similar device driver for NetWare called Open Data-Link Interface (ODI).
The NDIS 2.0 specification was 5000 lines.
Current version: NDIS 5.0, as of 2000-10-30.
Home (http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/devdes/ndis5.htm).
cdrom.com NDIS archive (ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/network/ndis/).
["3TECH, The 3COM Technical Journal", Winter 1991].
