The NCB structure represents a network control block. It contains information about the command to perform, an optional post routine, an optional event handle, and a pointer to a buffer that is used for messages or other data. A pointer to this structure is passed to the (NetBIOS) function

The Netbios function interprets and executes the specified network control block (NCB). The Netbios function is provided primarily for applications that were written for the NetBIOS interface and need to be ported to Windows. Applications not requiring compatibility with NetBIOS should use other interfaces, such as mailslots, named pipes, RPC, or distributed COM to accomplish tasks similar to those supported by NetBIOS. These other interfaces are more flexible and portable.

The ADAPTER_STATUS structure contains information about a network adapter via the (NetBIOS) API call. This structure is pointed to by the ncb_buffer member of the NCB structure. ADAPTER_STATUS is followed by as many NAME_BUFFER structures as required to describe the network adapters on the system