NdisReadNetworkAddress (NDIS 5.1) function

Note   NDIS 5. x has been deprecated and is superseded by NDIS 6. x. For new NDIS driver development, see Network Drivers Starting with Windows Vista. For information about porting NDIS 5. x drivers to NDIS 6. x, see Porting NDIS 5.x Drivers to NDIS 6.0.

NdisReadNetworkAddress returns the software-configurable network address that was stored in the registry for a NIC when it was installed in the machine.

Syntax

VOID NdisReadNetworkAddress(
  _Out_ PNDIS_STATUS Status,
  _Out_ PVOID        *NetworkAddress,
  _Out_ PUINT        NetworkAddressLength,
  _In_  NDIS_HANDLE  ConfigurationHandle
);

Parameters

• Status [out]
  Pointer to a caller-supplied variable in which this function returns the status of the call as one of the following:

  • NDIS_STATUS_SUCCESS
    The caller can use the address returned at NetworkAddress for its NIC.

  • NDIS_STATUS_FAILURE
    There was no NIC address information available in the caller's registry Parameters key or the value stored was not a string.

• NetworkAddress [out]
  Pointer to a caller-supplied variable in which this function returns a pointer to the buffered network address, stored as a sequence of byte integers, if the call is successful.

• NetworkAddressLength [out]
  Pointer to a caller-supplied variable in which this function returns the number of bytes returned at NetworkAddress.

• ConfigurationHandle [in]
  Specifies the handle returned by NdisOpenConfiguration.

Return value

None

Remarks

NdisReadNetworkAddress searches the registry Parameters key designated by the given ConfigurationHandle for the keyword NetworkAddress, converts the value of this string-type entry into a sequence of byte integers, and stores the requested information internally. The storage that NDIS allocates for such an address remains valid until the NIC driver calls NdisCloseConfiguration, which frees the memory.

The caller cannot use the variable at NetworkAddress as a pointer unless NdisReadNetworkAddress returns NDIS_STATUS_SUCCESS at Status.

The installation program for a NIC that supports software-configurable network addressing should store a value entry named with the NetworkAddress keyword in the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972...}\00xx key of the registry.

A NIC installer usually stores the value of a NetworkAddress entry in the registry as a string of hexadecimal digits. Optionally, an installer can store such an address as a string of paired digits, with each pair separated from the next by a hyphen. NdisReadNetworkAddress discards hyphens and converts each such pair into a single byte.

In either form, NdisReadNetworkAddress converts the address specified as a string, one character at a time, into the equivalent integer until the string is exhausted.

In the registry of Windows 2000 and later versions, such an installed address string contains Unicode characters.

Note that NDIS does not validate the value at NetworkAddress. NDIS does not guarantee that this value is a valid address, that the value has the proper length, or even that the value is a network address. The caller of NdisReadNetworkAddress must therefore not make any assumptions about this value and must itself validate the value. If the caller determines that the value is out of bounds, it should not use the value; instead, it should use the permanent medium access control (MAC) address or a default address.

Requirements

See also

NdisCloseConfiguration

NdisOpenConfiguration

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