INFO: Network Binding Analysis (192483)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Win32 Device Driver Kit (DDK) for Windows NT 4.0
This article was previously published under Q192483

SUMMARY

This article explains how network bindings occur under Windows NT 4.0 with respect to a network interface card (NIC), corresponding driver, and a transport driver.

MORE INFORMATION

NIC Driver to NIC Bindings

When the NCPA binding engine performs its binding analysis, the NIC driver binding rules cause the NIC driver to be bound to each NIC under its control. These binding rules also dictate that the device names exported by the NIC driver (on the NIC driver's Linkage key Export line) are the device names of each NIC the driver controls. The layout of this section of the registry is: 
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Elnkii\Linkage
      Bind: REG_MULTI_SZ:\Device\Elnkii1\Device\Elnkii2...
      ->   Export: REG_MULTI_SZ:\Device\Elnkii1\Device\Elnkii2...
      Route: REG_MULTI_SZ:"Elnkii1""Elnkii2"...

Transport Driver to NIC [Driver] Bindings

The binding rules further dictate that each transport driver will be bound to all device names exported by all NIC drivers. Since the NIC driver exports its managed NIC device names, the entries that are written to the transport driver's bind line are the device names of all NICs managed by the available NIC drivers. The layout of this section of the registry is: 

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Nbf\Linkage
      ->   Bind: REG_MULTI_SZ:\Device\Elnkii1\Device\Elnkii2...
      Export: REG_MULTI_SZ:\Device\Nbf_Elnkii1\Device\Nbf_Elnkii2...
      Route: REG_MULTI_SZ:"Elnkii1""Elnkii2"...

When the transport driver initializes, it retrieves all entries from its Linkage key bind line. For each entry, it calls the NDIS wrapper to request an NDIS binding to the indicated NIC.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:7/21/2004
Keywords:kbinfo kbNDIS KB192483
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