Inspiron 600m - How to Create two Network Connections

Question

I'm currently using this laptop for both office and home use. The LAN connections in my office is configured manually.

I've just managed to install broadband at home and the technician opt for automatic configuration.

I'm aware that each time I change this option (automatic/manually), all manually entered info are erased.

So the situation now is whenever I'm at work, I have to perform a manual configuration. And when I'm at home, I have to change it to automatic configuration.

As you can see this is very tedious and for the fact that I'm not very knowledgeable in networking issues.

I did try to use the "create a new connection" command but don't seem to work...

Is there a way which I can create a new connection so that I can just disable one of them with respect to my location?

Please can anyone Help ... .. .

johnallg · Answer

I have the same situation here, and what I did (I have a D-Link router at home) is left my NIC set up for the work assigned IP address situation, and at home I changed the LAN address of my D-Link router to be the address of my work Gateway address, and my D-Link, even though set to DHCP, will still see my assigned IP address as it is now within its range of addresses.  I hope this is clear.

jwatt · Answer

If the way your network addressing works doesn't make John's elegant solution possible, there's a product called  NetSwitcher that makes maintaining multiple network configurations easier. Jim

tennizbal · Answer

I would like to thank you all for taking time to read and provide me with all possible alternatives to the situation I'm facing at the moment...   Thank you all and keep them coming !! ...

jdquickland · Answer

What OS are you using?
If Windows XP you have an Alternet Settings tab in the TCP/IP entry under your network card properties. Leave the General settings to Automatic, and set the alternate settings to your office network settings.

If you are not on XP you will have to use a third party util for multiple network configs.

tennizbal · Answer

Yes I am running on XP on this laptop.

Pardon me for being new to XP; I don't quite understand as you've explained by making an alternate setting.

I apreciate if you can elaborate a bit more.

Many Thanks !

mraneri · Answer

go to the network connections in control panel

right click the wireless and go to status ->properties

scroll down to the tcp/ip protocol, select it and click properties

you should then see general and alternate config tabs.

what you should do ( and would probably be easiest) would be to set your home network to dhcp and configure the alternate tab for work.

that way at home it'll use dhcp and at work it'll see that there's no dhcp and then use the alternate. make sense?

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Inspiron 600m - How to Create two Network Connections

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