MSMQ multicast (PGM) binding to wrong network interface

Question

Has anyone had any luck getting MSMQ multicast (PGM) to bind to a specific network interface using the MulticastBindIP registry setting?

MSMQ Multicast (PGM) always seems to bind to the first interface listed by ipconfig. In my case, I have VMware installed, so I have two virtual network interfaces (VMnet8 and VMnet1) as well as my network card. It isn't useful to have MSMQ send PGM packets to the VMware virtual interfaces.

I have attempted to use the MulticastBindIP registry setting (of course, restarting MSMQ after the change), but this does not seem to make any difference. For example, the IP address of my "Local Area Connection" is 172.18.224.245, so I set the following registry key value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Parameters]
"MulticastBindIP"=dword:ac12e0f5

The DWORD is stored with most significant bytes first. However, using wireshark, I can see that the PGM packets are not getting sent to this interface (but still sent to the first interface listed by ipconfig).

The documentation could be wrong, so I also tried variations such as: least significant bytes first and even using a (dot-delimited IPv4-style) string value. Nothing seems to make any difference. The only way I can get MSMQ multicast to bind to the correct interface is to disable all virtual interfaces. This isn't a workable solution.

Answer 1

If anyone is interested, "MulticastBindIP was introduced for Windows 2003 Server and not back-ported to Windows XP". Thanks to John Breakwell's help. See this Microsoft newsgroup discussion for more details.

The only solution I've found on Windows XP is to disable all interfaces except the "Local Area Connection". When you re-start the MSMQ windows service it will bind to the correct network interface (because it's the only one available). I suspect it's not that common to have multiple network cards in a machine running WinXP, but it is common to have VMware or VirtualBox virtual interfaces that expose this issue with MSMQ binding.

FYI, For more recent operating systems, where the MulticastBindIP registry setting is supported, there is some debate on whether the value is a DWORD or REG_SZ.