Networking Subsystem Architecture | Server Network Stack components | Network Driver Architecture

The network architecture, that includes many components,  protocols and  interfaces . The following sections discuss tuning guidelines for some of the components involved in server workloads

The network architecture is working as  layered, and the layers can be broadly divided into the following sections:

·         The protocol stack
This implements protocols such as UDP/IP and TCP/IP  . These layers expose the transport layer interface for layers above them.   
·         The network driver and Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS)
These are the bottom layers. NDIS exposes interfaces for the driver below it and for the layers above it, such as TCP/IP.
    
·         User-mode applications
·  System drivers
      These are typically clients that use a transport data extension (TDX) or Win sock Kernel (WSK)            interface to expose interfaces to user-mode applications. The WSK interface was introduced in            Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista,and it is exposed by AFD.sys. The interface                        improves performance by eliminating the switching between user mode and kernel mode.