NDIS(4)                FreeBSD 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
     subsystem 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 and USB bus attachments.  (Cardbus devices are
     also supported as 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.

DEPRECATION NOTICE
     This driver is scheduled for removal prior to the release of FreeBSD 14.0

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>.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6         March 14, 2010         FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6