What's New at PCAUSA

The PCAUSA NDIS Interface Impairment Generator is a NDIS filter that can be used to modify packet flow for testing. The Impairment Generator can perform random packet drops as well as packet delays on a selected adapter. In addition the tool can edit TTL (IPv4) and Hop Limit (IPv6).

The driver executables as they are may be of some benefit to developers. Source code can be licensed in the future.

PCAUSA has released an update to the OIDScope application that includes some additional NDIS 6 OID definitionss.
 

The PCAUSA Wireless LAN Explorer (WLAN Explorer) is a the initial output of a internal research project into the Native Wi-Fi 802.11 Network Monitor Mode from the perspective of an ISV. The demonstration tool  includes a NDIS 6 Lightweight Filter (LWF) and a companion Managed user-mode application written in C#. The tool utilizes both the user-mode "WLAN API" as well as kernel-mode NDIS to control the lowest-level Native 802.11 miniport and capture Native 802.11 packets.

The WLAN Explorer tool should be considered as an experimental work-in-progress. Although there are no known faults that could cause faults, some of the controls are totally experimental.

[WLAN Explorer Information...]

The IP Redirector suite is a potentially powerful tool that allows a user-mode filtering application to have complete control of incoming and outgoing IPv4 and ARP packets.

Although IP Redirector has performance limitations and doesn't offer the functionality of the Windows Filtering Platforms (WFP - available on Vista and later platforms), it's simplicity and range of platform support may be attractive for a variety of applications.

I have posted a Q&A in the form of an "interview" that attempts to explain where this product can fit in the Windows network filtering context.

[The PCAUSA NetBug Reported Interviews Thomas F. Divine...]

The "PCAGizmo" software consists of NDIS 5 amd NDIS 6 filter drivers and a companion Win32 console application that work together to log NDIS OID requests and NDIS status indications as they are passed between NDIS miniport, filter and protocol drivers.

One use of PCAGizmo is to study 802.11 OID operations performed by wireless management software.

This update provides some support for new OIDs added with NDIS 6.20 and Windows 7.

PCAGizmo Information... 

This set of NDIS 5 & NDIS 6 filter drivers redirect incoming and outgoing IPv4 and ARP packets to a Win32 user-mode application. This allows packet filtering to be performed in the user-mode environment. Packets are represented as ordinary byte arrays and packet I/O is performed using Win32 ReadFile and WriteFile APIs.

This is a simple and flexible approach can be useful in applications that are filtering lower-bandwidth connections (Satellite, 4G, DSL speeds).

[More Information...]

It's about time for PCAUSA to discontinue deprecated products and introduce new ones more suitable to the current Windows platforms. Accordingly, these products are being discontinued:

The good news that there will be new samples more appropriate for current Windows platforms.

The primary goal of this release is to provide improved Windows Vista and preliminary Windows 7 installation support. Application development is migrated to Visual Studio 2005 and driver development to WDK 6001.18002.

This release includes new tools for installation are easier to integrate into Windows Installer projects. The Rawether drivers can be installed using the traditional non-PnP method or alternatively using INF files.

NDIS 6 drivers and new Rawether functionality is not included in this release.

Rawether V5.6 uses Visual Studio 2005 for application development while V5.7 uses Visual Studio 2008. Otherwise, these two versions are the same.

Visit the Rawether for Windows website... 

The primary goal of this release is to provide Windows Vista support with a minimum of effort. NDIS 6 drivers and new Rawether functionality is not included in this release.

Visit the Rawether for Windows website... 

PCAUSA has released an update to the OIDScope application that includes limited support Vista Native Wi-Fi. A rudimentary "DOT11" property page has been added that displays some simple DOT11 information.

This release includes a small modification that allows OIDScope to properly detect the Intel 3945ABG NIC and show the 802.11 property page on pre-Vista Windows versions.
 

This release includes several bug fixes to the Rawether base runtime components (driver and DLL) and initial suport for Visual Studio 2005.

Visit the Rawether for Windows website... 

The primary purpose of this release is to provide support for the RTM build of Windows x64 Edition (AMD64) platforms. The release also includes some fixes and improvements specific to the Rawether .NET C# applications and class libraries.

Rawether .NET is a .NET Framework API written in C#  that provides a uniform interface between user-mode applications and PCAUSA NDIS drivers. Basically, it is a C# version of the current Rawether for Windows 'C' API - but greatly extended. Rawether .NET provides a rich, consistent NDIS user-mode .NET Framework API across the Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 platforms.

Beta testing uncovered one "real" bug in some overloads of the .NET SetInformation method. Based on feedback some additional 802.11 classes were added to simplify setting WEP and WPA keys.

In addition, this release includes a new C# forms-based application in addition to the console application provided with the initial Beta. The C# NDIScope application includes a simple packet capture dialog intended to illustrate that Rawether .NET does include a practical .NET packet collection interface. The packet collection dialog us (very) loosely modeled after the well-known TcpDump utility.

See Introduction to Rawether .NET.

Bug Fixes in V5.5 802.11 Helper Functions

Unfortunately the initial release of Rawether V5.5 included two bugs in the 802.11 helper functions. These have been fixed in this maintenance release:

See Detailed Release Notes.

Rawether .NET C# Programming Interface - Beta 1

Rawether .NET is a .NET Framework API written in C#  that provides a uniform interface between user-mode applications and PCAUSA NDIS drivers. Basically, it is a C# version of the current Rawether for Windows 'C' API - but greatly extended. Rawether .NET provides a rich, consistent NDIS user-mode .NET Framework API across the Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 platforms.

This release of Rawether includes Beta 1 of Rawether .NET.

See Introduction to Rawether .NET.

PCAUSA has released an update to the OIDScope application that fixes a bug associated with detection of some 802.11g Wi-Fi adapters.
 

This is a new major release of Rawether for Windows - the first major update since the release of V5.0 in December, 1998. Features in Rawether V5.5.17.00 include:

And more...

See What's New in Rawether V5.5

Customers using V5.03.16.57 should upgrade to V5.03.16.58.

See Detailed Release Notes.

The OIDScope application has been extensively reviewed as one part of the next release of Rawether for Windows. If you are using an earlier version of OIDScope you probably will want to update to this release. The 802.11 Property Page may be of particular interest to some developers. The ability to make a NDIS query on a custom OID may be of interest to others.