Chapter 3  Installation and Binding

Every NDIS driver, whether a NIC driver, an intermediate driver or a protocol driver must provide a setup file, sometimes called an .inf script, containing information about how that driver is loaded and about its relationships to other network drivers. During system setup, the network is configured on the machine, and the setup file for each network component writes information into the registry that describes how this component fits within the set of installed network drivers that are bound into network stack(s). This registry information is read by NDIS and the network drivers during driver initialization.

After initial system setup, whenever the network control panel application (NCPA) is run to reconfigure the network, for example to install a new driver, a new binding analysis is carried out, and NCPA writes modified registry contents that reflect the new configuration and the new binding relationships.

This describes what binding means in the context of NDIS driver installation and how binding information is established during setup and configuration, as well as what binding rules must be put into the registry for various network components.