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A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, [3] network adapter, LAN adapter and physical network interface [4]) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. [5] Early network interface controllers were commonly implemented on expansion cards that plugged into a computer bus.
A wireless network interface controller may be implemented as an expansion card and connected using PCI bus or PCIe bus, or connected via USB, PC Card, ExpressCard, Mini PCIe or M.2. The low cost and ubiquity of the Wi-Fi standard means that many newer mobile computers have a wireless network interface built into the motherboard.
TCP offload engine (TOE) is a technology used in some network interface cards (NIC) to offload processing of the entire TCP/IP stack to the network controller. It is primarily used with high-speed network interfaces, such as gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, where processing overhead of the network stack becomes significant.
Similarly, Wake-on-LAN and Boot ROM functionality is implemented in the network interface card (NIC), which may have PHY, MAC, and other functionality integrated into one chip or as separate chips. Common Ethernet interfaces include fiber or two to four copper pairs for data communication.
Therefore, the NDIS acts as the interface between the media access control (MAC) sublayer, which is the lower sublayer of the data link layer, and the network layer (layer 3). The NDIS is a library of functions often referred to as a " wrapper " that hides the underlying complexity of the NIC hardware and serves as a standard interface for ...
In non-promiscuous mode, when a NIC receives a frame, it drops it unless the frame is addressed to that NIC's MAC address or is a broadcast or multicast addressed frame. In promiscuous mode, however, the NIC allows all frames through, thus allowing the computer to read frames intended for other machines or network devices.
In telecommunications, a network interface device (NID; also known by several other names) is a device that serves as the demarcation point between the carrier's local loop and the customer's premises wiring. Outdoor telephone NIDs also provide the subscriber with access to the station wiring and serve as a convenient test point for ...
A converged network adapter (CNA), also called a converged network interface controller (C-NIC), is a computer input/output device that combines the functionality of a host bus adapter (HBA) with a network interface controller (NIC).