Prerequisites

IBM i side

IBM i V5R4 minimum.
The ADO.NET provider works from IBM i V5R4 onwards, V7R4 or later is recommended. The Entity Framework Core layer (Aumerial.EntityFrameworkCore) requires IBM i 7.2 at minimum (it relies on the modern QSYS2 catalogs).

Version details:

IBM i version	ADO.NET provider	EF Core	Notes
V5R4 to 7.1	Yes	No	Below 7.2, some `GetSchema` collections (those querying the QSYS2 catalogs) are unavailable.
7.2 and 7.3	Yes	Yes	Full feature set.
7.4 and later	Yes (recommended)	Yes	NTi's primary validation baseline.

Note: built-in multi-factor authentication (TOTP) is a recent IBM i feature (7.6). On earlier releases, NTi connections work normally without an additional factor.

Required

A user profile and its password (every QPWDLVL level is supported)
A valid NTi license key, installed by default in the KNTI library (another library can be designated with the license library connection keyword)
A TCP/IP interface configured and reachable from the .NET client
The *DATABASE, *RMTCMD and *SIGNON TCP services running
The ports of these services set to their defaults or known (see "Network and ports" below)

Optional

TLS: certificates configured in DCM and TLS host services active, for ssl=true
*SVRMAP running (port 449 by default) if the service ports are unknown: NTi can then resolve them through the port mapper (use mapper=true)

.NET side

Package targets

The Aumerial.Data.Nti package ships five compilation targets:

Target (TFM)	Covers
`net472`	.NET Framework 4.7.2 and later (Windows)
`netstandard2.1`	.NET Standard 2.1 implementations (Mono 6.4+, etc.)
`net5.0`	.NET 5, 6 and 7
`net8.0`	.NET 8 and 9
`net10.0`	.NET 10

Consumer runtime compatibility

Your runtime	Target loaded	Supported
.NET Framework 4.7.2 / 4.8 / 4.8.1	`net472`	Yes
.NET 5 / 6 / 7	`net5.0`	Yes
.NET 8 / 9	`net8.0`	Yes
.NET 10	`net10.0`	Yes

Note: NTi remains consumable from .NET versions that are now out of Microsoft support (.NET 5, 6, 7 for instance), but align your deployments with the .NET support policy.

Also required on the client side:

TCP/IP connectivity to the IBM i partition
Internet access (or an internal NuGet feed) for the initial package restore
Optional: a .NET editor (Visual Studio, JetBrains Rider, VS Code, etc.)

Architectures

NTi is 100% managed and AnyCPU: no native dependencies, not even System.Text.Encoding.CodePages, so there is no per-architecture binary to deploy. The provider runs on every architecture where .NET runs:

Architecture	Systems	Condition
x86	Windows	.NET Framework 4.7.2+ or .NET 5+
x64	Windows, Linux, macOS	.NET Framework 4.7.2+ (Windows) or .NET 5+
ARM64	Windows, Linux, macOS (Apple Silicon, AWS Graviton, etc.)	.NET 5+ depending on the OS
ppc64le	Linux on Power (including alongside the IBM i)	.NET 8 or later
s390x	Linux on IBM Z	.NET 8 or later

Workloads

Every .NET workload is covered, with no specific configuration:

Console applications and workers
ASP.NET Core: APIs, MVC, Razor Pages, Blazor
WinForms and WPF desktop clients
Windows services and systemd daemons
Docker and Kubernetes containers (Linux or Windows images)
Serverless: Azure Functions, AWS Lambda (x64 and ARM64)
.NET MAUI (through the .NET 8+ targets)

Note: for web and service workloads, enable connection pooling (pooling=true), which is inactive by default. See the Connection page.

Network and ports

NTi opens outbound TCP connections from the .NET client to the IBM i host servers:

Service	Host server	Port	TLS port
Port mapper	*SVRMAP	449	n/a
Signon	*SIGNON	8476	9476
Database	*DATABASE	8471	9471
Commands and programs	*RMTCMD	8475	9475

In clear text, open 8476, 8471 and 8475 from the client to the IBM i; with TLS (ssl=true), open 9476, 9471 and 9475.
Port 449 is only needed when using the port mapper (use mapper=true, for non-standard, unknown ports). Each port can also be set individually in the connection string (signon port, database port, command port, mapper port).
IBM reference: TCP/IP ports required for IBM i Access and related functions.

What's next?

Your environment meets the prerequisites. Continue with:

Installation: license, NuGet package and first program
Connection: connection string, pooling, MFA, TLS