Guidelines for 802.11 Promiscuous Receive Operations

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Important  The Native 802.11 Wireless LAN interface is deprecated in Windows 10 and later. Please use the WLAN Device Driver Interface (WDI) instead. For more information about WDI, see WLAN Universal Windows driver model.

 

The 802.11 station operates in a promiscuous mode if the current packet filter has any of the following filter settings.

NDIS_PACKET_TYPE_PROMISCUOUS
Enables promiscuous reception of media access control (MAC) service data unit (MSDU) packets, as well as all MAC protocol data unit (MPDU) fragments associated with the MSDU packet.

NDIS_PACKET_TYPE_802_11_PROMISCUOUS_MGMT
Enables promiscuous reception of MAC management PDU (MMPDU) packets, as well as all MPDU fragments associated with the MMPDU packet.

NDIS_PACKET_TYPE_802_11_PROMISCUOUS_CTRL
Enable promiscuous reception of 802.11 Control frames.

For more information about these filter settings, see OID_GEN_CURRENT_PACKET_FILTER.

Note  It is only valid for the miniport driver to enable the NDIS_PACKET_TYPE_PROMISCUOUS, NDIS_PACKET_TYPE_802_11_PROMISCUOUS_MGMT, or NDIS_PACKET_TYPE_802_11_PROMISCUOUS_CTRL packet filters if the driver is operating in Network Monitor (NetMon) or Extensible Access Point (AP) modes. For more information about these modes, see Network Monitor Operation Mode and Extensible Access Point Operation Mode.

 

If the 802.11 station is enabled for promiscuous receive operations, the station and miniport driver must follow these guidelines.

  • When configured for promiscuous receive operations, the 802.11 station must be configured to receive 802.11 packets with any destination address (DA) within the 802.11 MAC header.

  • If the 802.11 station has a matching cipher key for the 802.11 packet, the station must attempt to decrypt and reassemble all MPDU fragments for the 802.11 packet. Note  If the TKIP cipher algorithm is enabled and the received packet fails during the message integrity code (MIC) verification, the miniport driver must not make an NDIS_STATUS_DOT11_TKIPMIC_FAILURE indication unless the packet was received by the 802.11 station in a nonpromiscuous mode.

     

  • If the 802.11 station is connected to a basic service set (BSS) network, the miniport driver must indicate receive packets through calls to NdisMIndicateReceiveNetBufferLists based on the following conditions:

    • The miniport driver must indicate 802.11 data packets only if the BSS Identifier (BSSID) address matches the BSSID of the network.
    • The miniport driver must indicate 802.11 control and management packets for any BSSID address.

  • If the 802.11 station is not connected to a BSS network, the miniport driver must indicate 802.11 packets for any DA or BSSID address in the 802.11 MAC header.

  • When the miniport driver is in the ExtAP INIT state, the NIC must turn off Address 1 matching and must not perform BSSID matching. BSSID matching is not applicable because the NIC has not joined or started a BSS.