I guess you technically could, because the handle your LSP returns is entirely up to it. Haven't thought about microkernels in a couple of decades :), but yes,

I guess you technically could, because the handle your LSP returns is entirely up to it. Haven't thought about microkernels in a couple of decades :), but yes, I can see how what you are saying could work since the handle will technically be a duplicatable kernel handle. It might be better for the service (or subsystem in NT microkernel terminology) to have a driver so that the client can reference it with a proper, dedicated handle, but that's a bit beyond my wheelhouse as to which approach is better. Edit: Completely forgot about ws2ifsl.sys which is a driver that exists just to give Non-IFS providers a kernel handle with the WPUCreateSocketHandle() call !