Allied Telesis AT-2973T/4, AT-2973SX manual Using the NetXtreme II Monolithic Driver

Chapter 4: Installing the Monolithic Software Driver

Using the NetXtreme II Monolithic Driver

The NetXtreme II Monolithic driver is used with a remote imaging software such as WinPE, although it is not associated with any operating system. Before you install a monolithic driver, you must install an AT-2973SX, AT- 2973T, or AT-2973T/4 adapter in a PC (or multiple PCs) that you want to act as a remote node. Once you install the adapter and the monolithic driver software, your can download the image from an image server to the PCs with an installed adapter.

The NetXtreme II Family Adapters, based on its advanced functionalities, uses a software architecture that includes a Virtual Bus Device (VBD) to extend functionalities beyond basic network connectivity. However, Microsoft, does not currently support this architecture when loading an operating system through its Windows Deployment Services (WDS), which was previously known as Remote Installation Services (RIS), or for the deployment agent used in the Automated Deployment Services (ADS). Therefore, a separate driver was created to accommodate these Microsoft deficiencies. This driver is known as the NetXtreme II monolithic driver, but it is sometimes referred to as the RIS driver.

The NetXtreme II monolithic driver was developed to work only for the text mode portion of a WDS legacy installation and to establish connectivity with a deployment agent for ADS. It is not intended to be used as a driver loaded in the running state of an operating system. The exception to this is the Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE).

For WDS, this driver is used similarly to any other network adapter driver for supporting network connectivity after the PXE boot to the WDS server. When placed in the I386 or AMD64 directory (depending on the version of the operating system being deployed), the monolithic driver is called to establish that there is driver support for the NetXtreme II Family Adapter included in the WDS legacy image.

For ADS, the driver is placed in the PreSystem directory on the server running ADS to establish connectivity with the deployment agent on remote systems with NetXtreme II adapters when booting from PXE.

While Windows PE 2005 natively supports the VBD architecture, it was found that using the minint switch in the startnet.cmd file does not. The minint switch performs a limited scan of the system bus to identify network devices only and, therefore, does not support the VBD architecture. Since only network connectivity is required in Windows PE, the only supported driver is the monolithic driver for the NetXtreme II Family adapter in this environment as well. Place the b06nd.inf file in the INF directory within the Windows PE image, and place the appropriate driver file (b06nd51a.sys for x64-based builds or b06nd51.sys for x86-based builds) in the driver's

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