1. NDIS vNext - NetAdapter
WinHEC 2015
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
NDIS vNext - NetAdapter
Don Stanwyck
Sr PM, Windows Core Networking
© 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

2. Agenda What, why and how of NetAdapter The architecture
Real world results
What’s in it for you

3. Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
What is NetAdapter?
NetAdapter is a WDF class extension that makes it easy to write a driver for your network card or USB Ethernet dongle
NetAdapter joins the productivity of WDF with the networking and performance of NDIS
Try our API preview in the Windows 10 Creators Update
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

4. Why build NetAdapter? Popular demand
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Why build NetAdapter?
Popular demand
“I want to leverage WDF, and I'm not exactly clear how mixing the NdisMRegisterDevice within a KMDF driver will work.”
“I have a USB driver for a special Ethernet USB hardware based on KMDF. Now I want to use the USB driver as a classical windows network device also and implement NDIS (with KMDF).“
“[NDIS has] no books, no seminars that I'm aware of.”
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

5. Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Why build NetAdapter?
Avoid resources spent in troubleshooting pnp/power bugs
Let WDF deal with PnP and Power complexity
Avoid late breaking bugs in PnP/power path, e.g. system hibernate/suspend
Avoid resources on abstracting other OS-specific complexities
Spend resources on domain-specific complexity instead
If a simple abstraction is available in WDF, why redo it?
Example: new Power framework, USB selective suspend, DMA ...
New OS features available easily – PoFx , DMA, FL/PL reset etc.
Flexibility to move the same model to user mode in future
WDF provides a mode-agnostic model for most features
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

6. Why build NetAdapter? Reduce port driver development/maintenance cost
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Why build NetAdapter?
Reduce port driver development/maintenance cost
Popular demand
WDF manages the complexity
WDF has more features
Scale for the cloud
100G NICs with 1000’s of queues
Cloud hosting uses NICs in new ways
Improved reliability
9F and 133 bugcheck resiliency
No more lost NET_BUFFER_LISTs
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

7. How we design NetAdapter
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
How we design NetAdapter
Right should be easy; wrong should be hard.
Stay consistent with WDF.
Build a fast, reliable, close-to-the-metal datapath.
Be 100% compatible with the network stack, usermode apps, existing NDIS APIs, and the universal driver model.
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

8. Help 3rd parties improve driver quality and reduce development time
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Help 3rd parties improve driver quality and reduce development time
Simpler model for driver development
Rich and familiar set of abstractions across device silos
WDF familiarity leads to shorter development time and better quality
E.g. Industry has strong WDF-skilled developer pool
100s of WDF drivers on SoC platforms
Developer resources can be easily reassigned
Same user and kernel driver model
Rich debugging and verification support
Shorter time to production
3rd parties are not constrained by silo-specific model limitations
Side-band communication, Bus enumeration, Idle power management, …
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

9. Traditional NDIS Miniport Model
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Kernel
Protocol
PnP
Power
Data
OIDs
Traditional NDIS Miniport Model
NDIS
Your NIC
Driver
Your hardware
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

10. The NetAdapter Class Extension
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Kernel
Protocol
Data
OIDs
PnP
Power
WDF
NDIS
The NetAdapter Class Extension
Your NIC
Driver
Net-
Adapter
Data
OIDs
WDF
Your hardware
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

11. Does it network? Microsoft Build 2017 9/12/2018 1:43 AM
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

12. Case Study: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Case Study: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Microsoft and Realtek collaborated to port their existing NDIS 6.40 miniport driver to use NetAdapter.
Realtek RTL8111D/RTL8168D chipset
1Gbps Ethernet
Typical PCIe: interrupt-driven with bus-mastering DMA
Checksum offload
Wake-on-LAN
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

13. Case Study: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Case Study: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Half the lines of code when using NetAdapter class extension.
The Tx and Rx handlers have zero spinlocks. No refcounts, no linked lists, no async code, no klunky pause
The transmit path can bypass DMA when allowed
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

14. Case Study: USB network adapter
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Case Study: USB network adapter
We started with an existing NDIS miniport driver, which used WDF in miniport mode
USB 2.0 chipset
100Mbps Ethernet
Typical USB: bulk-in, bulk-out, and interrupt pipes
USB selective suspend, AOAC
Wake-on-LAN, PM protocol offloads
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

15. Case Study: USB network adapter
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Case Study: USB network adapter
Only 400 lines of code
for a complete datapath: both Tx and Rx. “Power managed” data path
spinlocks, interlocks,
DPCs, workitems,
timers, context, or
memory allocations { } No
on the datapath
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

16. How does this affect you?
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
How does this affect you?
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

17. What’s not changing today
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
What’s not changing today
NDIS is not going away.
NDIS will still get new features in the future.
You can still build, certify, and ship NDIS drivers.
NDISTest still verifies your driver does networking well.
Protocol drivers and LWFs interoperate with NetAdapter-based NIC drivers, same as NDIS miniports.
NDIS protocol & LWF drivers are not changing.
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

18. Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
The Adoption Plan
It’s crucial that NetAdapter get feedback from IHVs early on. Therefore, we follow an open source/open development model
All IHVs are encouraged to
Follow our development on GitHub
Experiment with the latest NetAdapter drop with their hardware
Open issues and provide feedback to MS
Close collaboration with a few selected IHVs
A long road ahead of us
NDIS 6 and NetAdapter will co-exist for the foreseeable future
Server Class Ethernet NIC, WLAN, MBB and UMDF support are coming later as NetAdapter matures
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

19. NetAdapter on Native Stack – where we are
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
NetAdapter on Native Stack – where we are
Applications
WinHttp/WinInet
TCPIP & filters
NDIS
WiFi
Driver
MBB
Ethernet
NetAdapter
- Realtek
Appear as
NetAdapter/NDIS Translator
NBL data path
PD data path
New data path
In production
In Prototype
Unmodified
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

20. NetAdapter – what we still need to do
The current sample and source are not API stable
The current sample and class definition are not performance tuned
Features like RSS, VMQ, LSO, RSC, etc. have yet to be implemented
Expansion to multiple queues is an ongoing development item
Buffer management needs to be developed
And lots more. We have a long way to go …

21. NetAdapter – what we still need to do
… and we need YOUR HELP
What we ask from you
Review the sample
Review the source code on github
Tell us how to improve this
Tell us how we could light up special capabilities of your NIC

22. Your next driver will use NetAdapter
Microsoft Build 2017
9/12/2018 1:43 AM
Your next driver will use NetAdapter
WDF is productive & feature-rich
NetAdapter is built for speed
It’s all based on your feedback
© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

23. Where to get more information?

24. What you’ll see at https://aka.ms/NetAdapter
4 videos giving details of NetAdapter
Information about what we do (and don’t) have at this stage of development
The documentation:
Driver samples on GitHub:
The source code for NetAdapter itself:

25. Where to get more information?
Questions?

26. 9/12/2018 1:43 AM
© 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.