C# threading and polling

Question

I have a tray icon that needs to display two icons:

1. If there is network connectivity, display a green circle with a check mark
2. If there isn't network connectivity, display a red circle with an X

So what I have is:

using System.Net.NetworkInformation;

bool isConnected = NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable()

So I'm thinking of starting a new thread or using the background worker progress because the tray icon is a NotifyIcon which is a component so I can't use:

Form.Invoke(delegate, object[])

to update the icon property of the NotifyIcon class.

My big concern is the polling process: I could write some logic that does:

while (true) 
{
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
    isConnected = NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable();
    if (isConnected)
        notifyIcon.Icon = "ConnectedIcon.ico";
    else
        notifyIcon.Icon = "DisconnectedIcon.ico";
}

but I've seen a couple of articles that tell me to stay away from Sleep(1000). I can't seem to find those articles since I didn't bookmark them. I'm just curious to know why that isn't a good idea for polling in a thread.

Answer 1

You can register an Event on NetworkChange so you are being notified when the status changes:

NetworkChange.NetworkAvailabilityChanged += new NetworkAvailabilityChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAvailabilityChanged);

void NetworkChange_NetworkAvailabilityChanged(object sender, NetworkAvailabilityEventArgs e)  
{
    if (e.IsAvailable) {
        Console.WriteLine("Network Available");
    } else {
        Console.WriteLine("Network Unavailable");
    }
}