Dual Stack Architecture

A version of this page is also available for

4/8/2010

Windows CE .NET 4.1 and later uses a dual-stack architecture as shown in the following illustration.

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The following table describes the functionality shown in the illustration.

Functionality	Description
Winsock 2.2	A programming interface that provides enhanced capabilities over Winsock 1.1, including installable service providers for additional third-party protocols. Winsock 2.2 also provides protocol independent APIs that concurrently support IPv4 and IPv6 in applications.
TCP/IP	A set of protocols that allow cooperating computers and devices to share resources across a network. The type of destination IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) used determines which TCP/IP stack is used. Version 4 includes supporting protocols such as ARP in IPv4, ICMP, IGMP, TCP, UDP, and an IPv4 Helper API that gives applications easy access to TCP/IP services. Version 6 includes the protocols supported byTCP/IPv4, DHCPLite, and the IPv6 Helper API.
PPP	A set of industry standard framing and authentication protocols that enables dial-up networking through any server that supports Point-to-Point Protocol.
Serial Driver	The serial port driver.
NDIS	The standard network driver architecture for all Windows-based operating systems.
Miniport driver	The driver that communicates with the hardware and communicates with the upper layers through NDIS.

Note

TCP/IPv4-only support is provided by Tcpstk.dll. To support dual-stack you must have Tcpstk.dll and Tcpip6.dll installed.

See Also