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Network Device Driver Environment
A network device is responsible for both transmitting and receiving frames
over the network media. Network devices have network device drivers
associated with them. A network device driver attaches a network subsystem
to a network interface, prepares the network interface for operation, and
governs the transmission and reception of network frames over the network
interface. Examples of network interface types include Ethernet, Fiber
Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), and Token Ring.
Similar to the character and block device drivers that are discussed in
Writing Device Drivers, a network device driver has the following sections:
• An include files section (Section 1.1)
• A declarations section (Section 1.2)
• A configure section (Section 1.3)
• An autoconfiguration support section (Section 1.4)
• An ioctl section (Section 1.9)
• An interrupt section (Section 1.10)
Similar to a character device driver, a network device driver can also have a
reset section (Section 1.8).
Unlike a character or block device driver, a network device driver contains
the following network driver-specific sections:
• An initialization section (Section 1.5)
• A start transmit section (Section 1.6)
• A watchdog section (Section 1.7)
• An output section (Section 1.11)
Figure 1–1 shows the sections that a typical network device driver can
contain. Network device drivers are not required to have all of these
sections, and more complex network drivers can have additional sections.
However, all network drivers must have a configure section, and because
network device drivers are associated with some device, they also must have
a device register header file.
Network Device Driver Environment 1–1