Installation guide

Chapter 8 About Network Device Drivers 105
LAN Manager creates network access using three types of network
device drivers. These three types are as follows:
• Protocol (or transport) drivers transfer LAN Manager events between
computers on the local-area network, working as intermediaries
between LAN Manager and the media-access control driver(s).
Protocol drivers are hardware independent; they communicate with
LAN Manager through a NetBIOS interface.
• Media-access control drivers work directly with network adapters,
acting as intermediaries between the protocol drivers and the
hardware. Media-access control drivers are written to communicate
with protocol drivers through the network driver interface. (For more
information about the network driver interface, see the
Microsoft/3Com LAN Manager Network Driver Interface
Specification (NDIS), version 2.01 provided with your network
driver.)
• Monolithic drivers combine protocol and media-access control
functions in one driver because they are written to communicate
directly with the hardware. However, because they support only a
particular manufacturer’s network adapters, monolithic drivers are
not necessarily NDIS-conformant. The loopback driver, which allows
a computer with no network adapter to run LAN Manager for testing
purposes, is a monolithic driver.
To communicate over a network, every LAN Manager server or
workstation must be configured with at least one protocol driver. That
is, it must have at least one protocol driver and at least one media-
access control driver or an all-in-one monolithic driver. The drivers you
install depend on the transmission medium and the protocol drivers and
network adapter(s) you want to use. Most computers can have as many
as 12 network adapters. The exception is a computer with
LAN Manager Basic for MS-DOS. LAN Manager Basic supports one
network adapter.
Note If a workstation will only be accessing a network from a remote
site via the Remote Access service, no network adapter or network
adapter driver is required. For more information on installing and using
the Remote Access service, see Appendix E, “
Using the Remote Access
Service,”
in the User’s Guide for MS-DOS Clients.