Best way to setup an XP Pro laptop to connect to different networks ?

[Nei1B]

Hi,

I've just bought a spanky new XP Pro laptop for our sales manager who is on the road between our 4 offices. Each branch is setup as a workgroup (no domains) on a different subnet that is connected to head office through a router/firewall and VPN.

Eg. office 1 :- 192.168.1.xxx
office 2 :- 192.168.2.xxx
etc

How can i set up the laptop so that he can sit down in any of the 4 offices, hook up to the network and work happily ? I presume i need 4 different ip addresses and default gateways to route back to our servers in head office ? I've has a search through the forums but couldn't find much info about this. Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Cheers,
Neil

 

[bcastner]

Set the laptop to obtain an IP address automaticly.

 

[Nei1B]

Sorry bcastner - I should've said - all the offices are setup with static IP addresses. Are you suggesting that I enable DHCP on each of the routers to see if the laptop will pick up a new IP address in each office ?

Thanks for the quick reply !

 

[aquias]

I agree with Bill.

That is the easiest way to make this happen. Enable DHCP on routers/server (whatever you're currently using in your environment) and setup a range for the laptop and other mobile devices to pull from.

When you do this, remember to setup a DHCP range that is outside of the range of the addresses already assigned or you open yourself up for IP conflicts.

 

[Auger282]

make location scripts that will change dhis config per location and smack them on his desktop...

then he can stay dhcp for hotels and what not and then when he reaches a site he can just run one of the scripts to be auto configured to the location where he currently is..

 

[aquias]

The only reason I dislike that solution Auger, is that it requires upkeep. Any changes made to these sites you'll need to get a hold of the users laptop to push out a new script and/or if there is a device failure it could impact their ability to obtain an IP.

And, speaking from personal experience, if the user is a "Power User" or someone of import, the ensuing storm is never worth it.

But, it is another workable solution for this problem vs enabling DHCP at all locations.

 

[allteltec]

The netsh command should do what you need to do, Just save to desktop using note pad and rename something.cmd

I use this one to setup to talk to Cisco OC48 Fiber Ring.

netch int ip show config
netsh int ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.1.0.25 255.255.255.0 192.1.0.1 1

I use this to go back to DHCP.

netsh int ip show config
netsh int ip set address "Local Area Connection" DHCP
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /all
pause

 

[Nei1B]

Thanks again everybody for your help. I'd originally thought of going down the route suggested by auger (or even setting up 5 separate users on the laptop - 1 for each branch and 1 for 'outside').

Just 1 last question - will the DHCP setup take care of setting a default gateway as well as providing an IP address ? Eg. in the branches the gateway has to be the router in that office subnet.

 

[allteltec]

The 192.1.0.25 is seting your local pc's IP the 192.1.0.1 is seting the gateway for the router.
netsh int ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.1.0.25 255.255.255.0 192.1.0.1 1

 

[bcastner]

DHCP will set the Gateway IP.

 

[aquias]

When you setup DHCP on the router, you should have several options you can configure. Among those are default gateway, dns, and wins servers.

Take your time on the first one and thoroughly go through all the options then just mimic the steps at each location (provided you have the same hardware)

 

[bcastner]

Remember too that Netsh.exe allows a saving to file of all settings, and a restore of those settings from a file. This makes any settings change perfectly batch-able.

See:

http://www.petri.co.il/configure_tcp_ip_from_cmd.htm

http://www.asp101.com/articles/stanley/nicsettings/default.asp