Installation guide

Chapter 8 About Network Device Drivers 115
The Driver-Information Files
The Setup program uses driver-information files associated with each
driver to install and coordinate multiple network device drivers. The
three kinds of driver-information files are discussed briefly in the
following list and then in more detail in the sections that follow.
NIF
Network-information (.NIF) files, text files that provide information
about network adapter drivers. Each network adapter driver must
have at least one corresponding .NIF file. The Setup program always
looks for the .NIF files in the directory DRIVERS\NIF.
XIF
Protocol-information (.XIF) files, text files that provide information
about protocol drivers. Each protocol driver must have at least one
corresponding .XIF file. The Setup program always looks for the
.XIF files in the directory DRIVERS\XIF.
PROTOCOL.INI
A text file containing configuration data for one network device
driver. A PROTOCOL.INI file is needed for each driver, whether it is
a protocol driver or a network adapter driver. The Setup program
combines the individual files into a master PROTOCOL.INI file that
contains information about all drivers installed on your computer.
The driver-information files include such data as the name and type of
driver to be installed, and the path to the location of the driver. Each
type of file is described in detail in the following section.
NIF Files
Network-information (.NIF) files contain information the Setup
program needs to install and coordinate network adapter drivers. A
network-driver adapter is identified by the model entry in its .NIF file.
A driver can have more than one .NIF file, with each version of the file
representing a different configuration of the driver.
Entries in a .NIF file have the following meanings:
model
A descriptive name for the network adapter. The Setup program
displays this information in the Network Drivers and Import Network
Drivers dialog boxes. The name can use any characters and be of any
length, although the Setup program displays only the first 36
characters.