Network Device Interface Specification networking, hardware, standard
(NDIS) A Microsoft Windows device driver programming interface allowing multiple protocols to share the same network hardware. E.g. TCP/IP and IPX on the same NIC. NDIS can also be used by some ISDN adapters.
A protocol manager accepts requests from the transport layer and passes them to the data link layer (routed to the correct network interface if there is more than one).
NDIS was developed by Microsoft and 3COM. Novell offers a similar device driver for NetWare called Open Data-Link Interface (ODI).
The NDIS 2.0 specification was 5000 lines.
Latest version: NDIS 5.0, as of 2000-10-30.
(http://microsoft.com/hwdev/devdes/ndis5.htm).
cdrom.com NDIS archive.
["3TECH, The 3COM Technical Journal", Winter 1991].
(2000-10-30)