A Critical Analysis of the Windows mLAN Driver Supervisor: Prof. Foss By: Shaun Miles

What is mLAN? Yamaha – using FireWire to connect studio devices via 1394 nodes implementing the mLAN architecture Allows easy connection of equipment in a professional environment Moving away from legacy studios peer-to-peer transfer of data – no need for host server serial bus – high speed standardised, structured architecture

Can have PC host controller  modelling device connection  connects input/output plugs between devices  allows easy routing of audio/video To understand the approach taken by Yamaha, must understand the Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers must conform to WDM architecture  handle I/O requests (IRP) from system  call system services in response  issue IRP’s to other drivers

I am looking at… Driver: how the host controller communicates with the firewire bus and connected devices via interface card in PC  Understand Driver design and development  Understand yamaha’s mLAN driver approach mLAN Driver 1 mLAN Device PC IEEE1394 Interface Card 234 0

WDM System creates Physical Device Object (PDO) on device detection  contains physical attributes of device  used for configuration and Power management PDO creates Functional Device Object (FDO)  represents device  models device functionality Driver creates instance of FDO on driver load  associated with PDO  interacts with device  can have many instances

Windows Kernel: Power Management  handles device power management messages I/O Manager  builds suitable IRP’s from requests from applications  passes IRP’s to driver stack PnP Manager  manages device objects that represent physical devices  Manages PDO’s and enumerates FDO’s

Function driver  understands how to make the hardware work  implements functionality of device  initiates I/O operations Bus driver  manages connection between the hardware and computer Filter drivers  optional secondary or support drivers  usually implemented by vendor PnP Manager I/O Manager Power Management Upper Filter Functional Lower Filter Bus HAL IRP Kernal Space Hardware Bus

mLAN Driver Analysis CmLANBusDriver - extends KDevice  handles driver initialisation, device management  PDO of driver CmLanBus – extends KPnPDevice  implements PnP, Power and IRP management functionality  FDO of driver Application WDM MIDI 1394ASIO WDM AUDIO CmLanBusDriver mLAN bus driver CmLanBus mLAN (child) Device user space kernel space hardware IOCTL calls KClass – template class for driver – Driver Development classes

I Propose… To make a critical analysis of the driver, and in doing so  produce an OO design document – model driver  produce an API for the Windows mLAN Driver easier means to develop applications for mLAN for further research purposes  attempt to improve or suggest relevant improvements to the driver

Time Line due to nature of project, time line is not concrete and exact length can undetermined Second term:  Produce OO design document  Evaluate Driver  Literature Review Third Term:  Investigate driver for weaknesses  Produce API  Project Poster  Improve driver Fourth Term:  Finish and test API  Write short paper  Write thesis

Questions? Thank you