B.7  Streams Transport Provider Lower Edge Translation

All Windows NT network adapter drivers use NDIS 3.0. However, most STREAMS stacks use the DLPI at their lower edges. While DLPI is a STREAMS message-based interface, NDIS 3.0 is a function-based interface. STREAMS includes a DLPI-NDIS 3.0 translator so that a STREAMS stack that uses DLPI can be configured to use any network adapter device recognized by Windows NT. The STREAMS dndis driver (\Device\Streams\dndis) translates connectionless-mode DLPI primitives into NDIS 3.0 primitives, and vice-versa.

To associate a stream opened to dndis with a network interface card, the DATAL_IBIND IOCTL command must be used. This is most easily done by using a plumbing daemon, as described in Section B.8.

The STREAMS PC_PROTO message structures described next are defined for DLPI. They are detailed in Further Readings on Streams, Reference1.