The Transport Driver Interface or TDI is the protocol understood by the upper edge of the

Transport layer In computer networking, the transport layer is a conceptual division of methods in the layered architecture of protocols in the network stack in the Internet protocol suite and the OSI model. The protocols of this layer provide end-to-end ...

of the Microsoft Windows

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine lea ...

network stack. Transport Providers are implementations of network protocols such as

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

NetBIOS NetBIOS () is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, N ...

, and

AppleTalk AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the ...

. When user-mode binaries are created by compiling and linking, an entity called a TDI client is linked into the binary. TDI clients are provided with the

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

. The user-mode binary uses the user-mode API of whatever network protocol is being used, which in turn causes the TDI client to emit TDI commands into the Transport Provider. Typical TDI commands are TDI_SEND, TDI_CONNECT, TDI_RECEIVE. The purpose of the Transport Driver Interface is to provide an abstraction layer, permitting simplification of the TDI clients.

References

* Windows XP Driver Development Kit documentation.

See also

References

Further reading