Checking network availability in Windows Phone

This article explains how to check the availability of network connection on Windows Phone 7.

Article Metadata

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Tested with

SDK: Windows Phone SDK 7.1

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Article

Created: SeemaB (24 Sep 2011)

Last edited: hamishwillee (24 Apr 2012)

Introduction

Many applications utilize network connection for various purposes like feeds, sending & receiving data to/from server, etc. The following article explains how one can detect if the network connection is available or not.

Network API Information

• NetworkInterface Class helps in providing network information to the developers. It helps detect if the network is on/off, address etc.
• NetworkInterface::GetIsNetworkAvailable is used to check if the network connection is available.The network connection is considered to be available if interface is not in loopback or is marked as “up”.
• Namespace: System.Net.NetworkInformation

Example Code to understand the network connection

namespace NetworkTest
{
    public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
    {
      public static readonly DependencyProperty NetProperty = 
            DependencyProperty.Register("NetworkAvailability", 
                                         typeof(string), 
                                         typeof(MainPage), 
                                         new PropertyMetadata(string.Empty));
 
        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            string isNetworkAvail = 
            NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable() ? "on" : "off";
        }    
    }
}