NWPA provides a modular design that separates NetWare driver support into two components, a Host Adapter Module (see Host Adapter Module) and a Custom Device Module (see Custom Device Modules).
Because they are separated, each component can be developed independently, allowing developers to concentrate their development efforts on their respective components.
NWPA provides internal support filters that eliminate the need for special driver handling of read-after-write verify, 16 MB addressing limitations on 16-bit host adapters, sector conversion, scatter/gather, and other similar considerations required in the previous NetWare driver specification.
NWPA allows hot driver replacement. Hot replacement is the ability to dynamically swap a driver already loaded in file server memory with a newer version without needing to down the server.