The Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) is a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

proprietary protocol In telecommunications, a proprietary protocol is a communications protocol owned by a single organization or individual. Intellectual property rights and enforcement Ownership by a single organization gives the owner the ability to place restricti ...

used mostly on top of

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

. It provides a virtual

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

link to most versions of the

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 ser ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, and FreeBSD operating systems. Multiple revisions of a partial RNDIS specification are available from Microsoft, but Windows implementations have been observed to issue requests not included in that specification, and to have undocumented constraints. The protocol is tightly coupled to Microsoft's programming interfaces and models, most notably the

Network Driver Interface Specification The Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) is an application programming interface (API) for network interface controllers (NICs). Specification It was jointly developed by Microsoft and 3Com Corporation and is mostly used in Microsoft Wind ...

(NDIS), which are alien to operating systems other than Windows. This complicates implementing RNDIS on non-Microsoft operating systems, but Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD implement RNDIS natively. The

USB Implementers Forum The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) is a nonprofit organization created to promote and support USB (Universal Serial Bus). Its main activities are the promotion and marketing of USB, Wireless USB, USB On-The-Go, and the maintenance of the spe ...

(USB-IF) defines at least three non-proprietary

USB communications device class USB communications device class (or USB CDC class) is a composite Universal Serial Bus device class. The communications device class is used for computer networking devices akin to a network card, providing an interface for transmitting Ethernet ...

(USB CDC) protocols with comparable "virtual Ethernet" functionality; one of them (CDC-ECM) predates RNDIS and is widely used for interoperability with non-Microsoft operating systems, but does not work with Windows. Most versions of Android include RNDIS USB functionality. For example,

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

smartphones have the capability and use RNDIS over USB to operate as a virtual Ethernet card that will connect the host PC to the mobile or Wi-Fi network in use by the phone, effectively working as a

mobile broadband modem A mobile broadband modem, also known as wireless modem or cellular modem, is a type of modem that allows a personal computer or a router to receive wireless Internet access via a mobile broadband connection instead of using telephone or cable t ...

or a

wireless card A wireless network interface controller (WNIC) is a network interface controller which connects to a wireless network, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, rather than a wired network, such as a Token Ring or Ethernet. A WNIC, just like other NICs, wor ...

, for

mobile hotspot Tethering, or phone-as-modem (PAM) is the sharing of a mobile device's Internet connection with other connected computers. Connection of a mobile device with other devices can be done over wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), over Bluetooth or by physical conne ...

tethering.

Controversy

In 2022 it was suggested that support for RNDIS should be removed from Linux, claiming that is inherently and uncorrectably insecure in the presence of untrusted USB devices.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Overview of Remote NDIS (RNDIS)
Microsoft application programming interfaces Computer networking

Controversy

See also

References

External links