Network Bridging Registry Settings

The registry stores information necessary to configure the system for applications and hardware devices. The registry also contains information that the operating system continually references during operation.

Microsoft® Windows® CE .NET uses the registry to control the miniport drivers that are bound to a network bridge. The registry settings for the network bridge are stored under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\Mbridge registry key, which stands for Media Access Control (MAC) layer bridge. The name of the protocol driver for the bridge is MBRIDGE. When optioning, the bridge exports the MBRIDGE1 adapter by reading the adapter name and additional configuration information from the registry. For more information on configuring the registry for a network bridge, see Network Bridging Sample Registry Configuration.

Note   The default registry values vary depending on which features are included in your platform. For more information, see Default Registry Settings.

The following table shows the registry settings for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\Mbridge.

Value : type Description
Bind : MULTI_SZ Specifies the allowable adapter for MBridge to bind to. Default value not set in the registry. This entry is required and must be filled out by the OEM.

The Bind value is the key enabler that informs the MBRIDGE protocol driver on which adapter it may bind to.

For each network adapter that binds to the MBRIDGE protocol driver, it is recommended that you set the ProtocolsToBindTO registry value under the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\<adapter name>\Parms] to "MBRIDGE" to make sure that the adapter is not bound to any other protocol, such as TCPSTK.

Note   The TCP/IP protocol driver currently binds to any adapter that matches its medium type. By using the combination of the ProtocolsToBindTo registry key at the adapter level, and the Bind key at the MBRIDGE level, you can prevent the adapter from binding to multiple protocol drivers.
DisableSTA : REG_DWORD Spanning tree algorithm (STA) is enabled by default if this value is not specified. Enables or disables STA.
Fanout : REG_DWORD Default setting is 32. Specifies the factor that is used to multiply the number of packets allocated to a copy path to determine the number of packets that are allocated to a non-copy path. For example, if the value is set to 32 and there are 100 packets in a copy path, 3200 packets are allocated to the non-copy path.
Linkage\Route : MULTI_SZ Default setting is MBRIDGE1. Specifies the adapter name exported by MBridge.
MaxBufferMemory : REG_DWORD Default setting is 200 Kbytes. Specifies the maximum amount of memory resources used for buffering.
MaxTableMemory : REG_DWORD Default setting is 100 Kbytes. Specifies the maximum amount of memory resources used for forwarding table.
SafetyMargin : REG_DWORD Default setting is 10%. Specifies the percentage of memory that is used as a safety margin.

See Also

Network Bridging | Network Bridging Sample Registry Configuration

 Last updated on Friday, April 09, 2004

© 1992-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.