In
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
and
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, a network redirector, or redirector, is an
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
driver that sends data to and receives data from a remote device. A network redirector provides mechanisms to locate, open, read, write, and delete files and submit print jobs.
It provides application services such as
named pipe
In computing, a named pipe (also known as a FIFO for its behavior) is an extension to the traditional pipe concept on Unix and Unix-like systems, and is one of the methods of inter-process communication (IPC). The concept is also found in OS/2 and ...
s and
MailSlot
A Mailslot is a one-way interprocess communication mechanism, available on the Microsoft Windows operating system, that allows communication between processes both locally and over a network. The use of Mailslots is generally simpler than named pi ...
s. When an application needs to send or receive data from a remote device, it sends a call to the redirector. The redirector provides the functionality of the
presentation layer
In the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking, the presentation layer is layer 6 and serves as the data translator for the computer network, network. It is sometimes called the syntax layer.
Description
Within the service layering semanti ...
of the
OSI model
The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model) is a conceptual model that 'provides a common basis for the coordination of SOstandards development for the purpose of systems interconnection'. In the OSI reference model, the communications ...
.
Networks Hosts communicate through use of this client software: Shells, Redirectors and Requesters.
In
Microsoft Networking, the network redirectors are implemented as