bredmond@dit.ie (06/05/91)
Possibly naive question: What is the difference between Packet Drivers & NDIS? Are they mutually exclusive alternatives? What is their future likely to be? When would I tend to use one & when the other? Barry Redmond bredmond%dit.ie@cunyvm.cuny.edu Dept of Electronics & Communications bredmond@dit.ie Dublin Institute of Technology Kevin St, Dublin 8, Ireland
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (06/07/91)
In article <8592.284cea9e@dit.ie> bredmond@dit.ie writes:
Possibly naive question: What is the difference between Packet
Drivers & NDIS?
From the users perspective: none.
From the technical perspective: many. Although the packet drivers and
NDIS drivers perform the same function (hiding the Ethernet card
behind a software spec && enabling multiple protocols' access to the
board), they do it in completely different ways.
Are they mutually exclusive alternatives?
Not really -- you can emulate a packet driver using the dis_pkt shim, which
itself uses an NDIS driver to do it work. In principle you can do the inverse
although no one has done it yet.
What is their future likely to be?
Dunno. An NDIS driver is required to run LAN Manager, so it's unlikely that
most companies would fail to provide one. I'll keep writing packet drivers
as long as I can, and because the source code is available, anyone can maintain
the code.
When would I tend to use one & when the other?
Pick an application. Most likely it will only support NDIS or the
packet driver spec, not both. Your decision is then made for you.
--
--russ <nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker.
Clear cutting is criminal, spiking trees is criminal, and using hyperbole of
this magnitude in a serious discussion is criminal. -- Irv Chidsey