Wireless, DHCP, 2 Networks

25 Sep 2006 3:23 PM

Tom

I have a laptop that I want to connect wirelessly to separate home and office
wireless networks. Both networks have DHCP servers. The laptop is assigned an
IP address by DHCP on the home network and everything works fine. On the
office network, the laptop seems to hang onto the home IP address (and home
gateway, home dns addresses) even though there is a DHCP server on the office
network.

Is there any way to automatically force the laptop to request an IP address
(and related gateway and dns settings) no matter if it is connecting to the
home or office network without having to manually type ipocnfig /release
ipconfig /renew? I thought this was automatic but it does not seem that it is.

Thank you.

25 Sep 2006 4:38 PM

Malke

Tom wrote:

> I have a laptop that I want to connect wirelessly to separate home and
> office wireless networks. Both networks have DHCP servers. The laptop
> is assigned an IP address by DHCP on the home network and everything
> works fine. On the office network, the laptop seems to hang onto the
> home IP address (and home gateway, home dns addresses) even though
> there is a DHCP server on the office network.
>
> Is there any way to automatically force the laptop to request an IP
> address (and related gateway and dns settings) no matter if it is
> connecting to the home or office network without having to manually
> type ipocnfig /release ipconfig /renew? I thought this was automatic
> but it does not seem that it is.

Presumably the networks are on different subnets? Assuming both networks
are peer-to-peer and work is not a domain, you can either use the
Alternate Configuration or a third-party multi-network manager. With
the Alternate Configuration, you have to wait around 30-60 seconds for
the first configuration to time out. You can still have automatic IP
assignment but it will be better if you put in the different
gateways/DNS servers.

Example:
Config #1 - IP assigned automatically, gateway/DNS 192.168.1.1
Config #2 - IP assigned automatically, gateway/DNS 192.168.2.1

If waiting for Config #1 to time out is annoying, try one of these
multi-network managers:

http://www.netswitcher.com - NetSwitcher
http://www.globesoft.com/mnm_home.html - MultiNetwork Manager
http://www.mobilenetswitch.com - Mobile Net Switch

Malke

--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

25 Sep 2006 7:10 PM

Steve Winograd [MVP]

In article <E214FB3C-6C7D-4637-8B5F-E22B5C6F7***@microsoft.com>, Tom
<T**@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>I have a laptop that I want to connect wirelessly to separate home and office
>wireless networks. Both networks have DHCP servers. The laptop is assigned an
>IP address by DHCP on the home network and everything works fine. On the
>office network, the laptop seems to hang onto the home IP address (and home
>gateway, home dns addresses) even though there is a DHCP server on the office
>network.
>
>Is there any way to automatically force the laptop to request an IP address
>(and related gateway and dns settings) no matter if it is connecting to the
>home or office network without having to manually type ipocnfig /release
>ipconfig /renew? I thought this was automatic but it does not seem that it is.
>
>Thank you.

Try disabling and then enabling the wireless network connection.