Device Drivers

One of the primary functions of an operating system is to provide hardware abstraction between platform hardware and the programs that run on it. This hardware abstraction typically occurs in device drivers that are part of the operating system, making those components an integral part of the system. IOS is no different in that regard. IOS contains device drivers for a range of platform hardware devices, such as Flash cards and NVRAM, but most notable are its device drivers for network interfaces.

IOS network interface device drivers provide the primary intelligence for packet operations in and out of interfaces. Each driver consists of two main components: a control component and a data component. The control component is responsible ...

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