OSDev.org

I've been reading for the last several hours about adding networking to your operating system, but none of the posts or google articles showed exactly *how* to do it.

A couple of questions that linger are:

How do I interface with the NIC? is it a port that I send information to like with the keyboard? or is it addressable memory that I can map?

I realize this probably has something to do with the PCI interface, but what if the ethernet card is built into the motherboard? does it follow the same rules?

Thanks.

P.S. I already know about all the protocols, packet format, etc.... I'm 75% done with my ccna.

NICs on the motherboard are usually accessed via PCI / PCI-E protocol. How excatly... well, you need a device driver fro your NIC, depending on the chipset used.