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

Installable File System The Installable File System (IFS) is a filesystem API in MS-DOS/PC DOS 4.x, IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows that enables the operating system to recognize and load drivers for file systems. History When IBM and Microsoft were co-developing OS/ ...

(IFS) drivers.

References

External links

Network Redirector Drivers
at

Microsoft Docs Microsoft Docs is the library of technical documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals who work with Microsoft products. The Microsoft Docs website provides technical specifications, conceptual articles, tutorials, guides, API ...

Device drivers Operating system technology {{compu-network-stub

See also

References

External links