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<concept id="GUID-F8482AFB-BD49-5EF2-8092-EAA11862F9C4" xml:lang="en"><title>What
is Network Interface Management (NifMan)?</title><shortdesc>This topic describes NifMan and how it works. </shortdesc><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>
<section id="GUID-0696D42B-7FE1-4427-96C9-7C6A23698A16"><title>Introduction </title> <p>Network interfaces enable mobile
devices to connect to a network. NifMan is a Symbian platform component that
creates and manages network interfaces. Agent plug-ins set up the network
interfaces. NIF plug-ins allow data to be transferred over the interface. </p> <p>NIF
plug-ins allow the NIF to be configured over a network interface such as PPP
(Point-to-Point Protocol) before a higher-level protocol such as TCP/IP is
started. This functionality allows actions such as obtaining and setting of
the IP address for the interface. Providing configuration functionality as
a plug-in allows new configuration mechanisms to be added without rewriting
the NIF. This allows a configuration plug-in to be used with different NIFs. </p> <p>In
Symbian platform the functionality of the NifMan component has
been replaced by the architecture changes for the <xref href="GUID-B7A40638-BA80-5175-B23D-2F3964C274A0.dita">Comms
Architecture</xref>. The NIFs have been changed so that they are <xref href="GUID-CF890168-0FCA-5BFD-AC86-E355B611A6B0.dita#GUID-CF890168-0FCA-5BFD-AC86-E355B611A6B0/GUID-0B0B61DE-AABC-5F87-8205-30F818F79C0A">Stack Nodes</xref>. </p> <p>The Nifman component contains the following agent
Stack Nodes: Subconnection Provider Agent node, Agent Connection Provider
node, Tunnel Agent Connection Provider node. These nodes are used when building
a Link layer. For example, the Ethernet protocol Flow node and Ethernet protocol
MCPR node can be used with the Agent Subconnection Provider node and the Agent
Connection Provider node. Nifman also contains an Agent Tier Manager node. </p> </section>
</conbody><related-links>
<link href="GUID-BF4E220C-2388-517B-87D8-78AB1EA6382E.dita"><linktext>Architecture</linktext>
</link>
</related-links></concept>