Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!CU.NIH.GOV!RAF
From: RAF@CU.NIH.GOV (Roger Fajman)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re:  DesqView/Windows3.0 and Packet Drivers - A Modest
Message-ID: <9009182149.AA18634@alw.nih.gov>
Date: 18 Sep 90 21:51:26 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 17

> The packet driver is only intended to provide an interface between the
> protocol stack and the network device driver. Issues involving
> application programming interfaces are better dealt with elsewhere
> (like at the application programming interface!).

You are certainly correct from the viewpoint of good design of an
overall system for supporting multiple TCP/IP applications under a
multitasking system.  However, as a practical matter, the different
implementations of TCP/IP on the PC have their various strong and weak
points.  There may be reasons to want to run two of them, in much the
same way that people want to run two different protocol stacks.

Can native NDIS do this?  I seem to recall hearing that under NDIS each
received packet is passed to all the protocol stacks to process or not
process, as desired.  If that's true, each TCP/IP stack could look at
only the packets with its IP address.  A kludge, but a possibly useful
kludge.