NDIS Miniport Drivers
NDIS supports basic types of network interface card (NIC) drivers. These are deserialized NDIS miniports, serialized NDIS miniports, connection - oriented NDIS miniports and NDIS miniports with a WDM Lower Edge.
NDIS Intermediate Drivers
NDIS intermediate drivers interface between upper-level protocol drivers and miniport drivers. Sample applications that might require an intermediate driver include data filtering for security or other purposes, load balancing fail over (LBFO) solutions and monitoring and collecting of network data statistics.
NDIS Protocol and TDI Drivers
Protocol drivers bind to an underlying miniport driver or intermediate driver that exports a MiniportXxx interface at its upper edge. NDIS protocol drivers might support TDI (Transport Data Interface) at their upper edge. They might also export a private interface to a higher-level kernel-mode driver, possibly through a transport stack of drivers, including one that supports TDI at the top of the stack.