Each such stack has its own requirements for hardware drivers. The Winsock API is avaialble in 16 bit and 32 bit versions. The 32 bit versions are for Windows NT systems. Winsock is implemented in Dynamically Loaded Libraries or DLLs. Currently work is under way to develop a freeware Winsock DLL but many commercial versions are available.
Ethernet is one of the most popular network cabling schemes in use.
The original Ethernet specification was developed by Xerox. Ethernet is a hardware and Data link specification. This allows any one SLIP client to connect to a SLIP server to provide connectivity between different IP hosts. Certain SLIP packages even allow the SLIP client to act as a gateway between a local network and a remote network, ie. SLIP packages are available for PC systems.