Inside Windows® Server 2003

Functional Description of Windows Resource Sharing

Figure 16.1 shows the general arrangement of network drivers in Windows Server 2003. The network stack consists of the following major elements:

• Network applications

• Network providers

• Redirectors

• Transports

• Network adapter interfaces

Figure 16.1. Network driver block diagram.

The applications at the top of the stack are not “applications” in the sense of spreadsheet or word processing programs. They are applications that make active network calls of one form or another. An email client application, for example, has a POP3 or an IMAP4 module that issues Winsock network calls to send and receive messages. ...