NetBIOS Operation

Protocol drivers expose the NetBIOS interface and map NetBIOS commands to their own native commands. The NetBIOS Frames protocol (NBFP) can be implemented by the underlying protocol software to perform the network I/O required by the NetBIOS interface.

The NetBIOS emulator accepts NetBIOS commands, translates them to Transport Driver Interface (TDI) calls, and forwards them to the transport driver using the TDI interface. NetBIOS emulation requires some functionality that is not required for all TDI drivers. A TDI driver that provides this functionality is called a NetBIOS-compatible TDI driver.

The following illustration shows how NetBIOS works on Windows NT/Windows 2000.

The NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT or NBT) protocol provides NetBIOS support for the TCP/IP protocol. It is defined by RFCs 1001 and 1002. The NetBIOS over NetBEUI protocol provides NetBIOS support for the NetBEUI protocol. This protocol is also called NetBIOS Frames (NBF). The NetBIOS over IPX (NBIPX) protocol provides IPX support. This protocol is also called NetBIOS on NetWare (NWNBLINK). It is based on Novell's NetBIOS.

For more information about the protocol and driver layers and the TDI interface, see the Device Development Kit (DDK) documentation.