NDIS Intermediate Drivers (NDIS 5.1)
Note NDIS 5. x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6. x. For new NDIS driver development, see Network Drivers Starting with Windows Vista. For information about porting NDIS 5. x drivers to NDIS 6. x, see Porting NDIS 5.x Drivers to NDIS 6.0.
NDIS intermediate drivers interface between upper-level protocol drivers and miniport drivers. Some applications that might require an intermediate driver include:
Media translation between a legacy transport driver and a miniport driver that manages a media type unknown to the transport driver.
Data filtering for security or other purposes.
Load Balancing Failover (LBFO) solutions.
Monitoring and collecting of network data statistics.
Before attempting to write an intermediate driver, you should read about NDIS miniport and protocol drivers. For more information about NDIS miniport drivers, see Miniport Drivers. For more information about NDIS protocol drivers, see NDIS Protocol Drivers.
The following sections introduce intermediate drivers and describe how to create and install such drivers:
Introduction to Intermediate Drivers
Writing an NDIS Intermediate Driver
Installing Intermediate Drivers