What's new in FreeBSD 5.3
  
    NDIS Binary Compatibility allows Windows XP network
      device drivers to be used with FreeBSD.
    IP Fast Forwarding for dramatic speedups in FreeBSD
      based routers.
    Continued locking and performance improvements to take
      advanced of SMPng architecture.
  
FreeBSD 5.3 Network Changes
  FreeBSD (i386) can use binary Ethernet and WLAN network
  drivers written to the Windows XP NDIS 5.1 specification.  Windows
  drivers are turned into FreeBSD Kernel Loadable Modules (KLDs) with
  the ndiscvt command :
  # ndiscvt -O -i neti557x.inf -s neti557x.sys \
	-n intel0
# kldload intel0
  More information is available in ndis(4), ndisapi(9), and
    ndiscvt(8).  This functionality was written by Bill Paul.