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General Connection Operation Guidelines

Important  The Native 802.11 Wireless LAN interface is deprecated in Windows 10 and later. Please use the WLAN Device Driver Interface (WDI) instead. For more information about WDI, see WLAN Universal Windows driver model.

 

When performing the connection operation, the miniport driver and 802.11 station must follow these guidelines regardless of the type of basic service set (BSS) network the station is configured for:

The miniport driver successfully completes the connection operation whenever any of the following happens:

  • The 802.11 station has successfully associated with an AP in an infrastructure BSS network.

  • The 802.11 station has successfully associated with at least one peer station in an existing IBSS network.

  • The 802.11 station has successfully started a new IBSS network.

If the connection operation is completed successfully, the miniport driver must remain in the operational (OP) operating state. For more information about this state, see Extensible Station Operating States.

Note  If the 802.11 station successfully connects to a BSS network, the miniport driver must not make a status indication of NDIS_STATUS_MEDIA_CONNECT.

 

The miniport driver fails the connection operation whenever any of the following happens:

  • The 802.11 station has failed to associate with any AP or peer station. Examples of connection operation failures include:
    • The 802.11 station has exhausted its list of candidate BSS networks without a successful association.
    • All of the PHYs on the 802.11 station have been turned off during the connection operation. For example, a PHY can be turned off through a set request of OID_DOT11_NIC_POWER_STATE.
  • The operating system makes a method request of OID_DOT11_RESET_REQUEST or a set request of OID_DOT11_DISCONNECT_REQUEST.

If connection operation fails, the miniport driver must return to the initialization (INIT) operating state. For more information about this state, see Extensible Station Operating States.

The following figure shows the sequence of events during a connection operation.

diagram illustrating the sequence of events during a connection operation