Ethernet, Cable Modems, Docking Stations and Laptops

[scroce]

situation:

1 Laptop
2 docking stations.

1 docking station at employee's home, other at the office.

The office has an ethernet LAN

The Laptop has a built in NIC, a built in modem, as well as two extra slots for PCMCIA cards.

MAIN OBJECTIVE: to make it as easy as possible for the employee to transition use of computer from home to office.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE:

employee would like to take advantage of cable modem access at home for fast internet connectivity.

PROPOSED(yet still somwhat muddy) SOLUTION:

Put 1 docking station in each location. That will allow the employee to plug in their laptop and use peripherals like 19in monitors, mouse, and various printers.

The confusion is surrounding the LAN vs. Cable modem. I imagine the laptop will be configured such that it has normal access to the office LAN. Since there is a nic already installed, once configured, all need be done is plug in the RJ45 connection when at the office and the employee would have LAN connectivity.

But what happens when the employee is at home and wants to use her private cable modem connection? it is my understanding that a cable modem requires a NIC card, but the on board NIC will already be configured for the Office LAN.

Since I have open PCMCIA slots, do I purchase a PCMCIA ethernet adapter for dedicated use to the cable modem when the employee is at home? Can this be done?

I've also heard rumours of a PCMCIA cable modem - is there such a thing?


Requesting ideas. I may have made some incorrect assumptions - if so feel free to point them out.

Thank you. I ask lots of questions, but I take care to be clear, and always post back results and resolutions so they can help others.

 

[wybnormal]

There are "switching" utilities that will let you set up a profile for each including the network settings, DNS, WINS, any IP addressing or DHCP and IE Explorer proxy etc settings.

This is the easiest way I know of to do this. At boot, the user just picks which profile they want or you let it boot completly and then load the new profile and possibly reboot for it to take effect.

The name of the one I had on a laptop escapes me right now but you can find them at Tucows or CNET downloads. They are pretty popular. The one I used was 12 bucks to register it.

Mike S
"Diplomacy; the art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock" Wynn Catlin

 

[SuperTy]

I agree. However, I have two profiles set up on my laptop. The one for the at-work docking station logs me into my work domain. The other profile logs me only onto my machine (local). So that when I come home I boot up, pick the local profile and access the internet (thru the docking station and my cable modem). That's not too vague is it?

 

[PAGEME1000]

Hi....

I have a cable modem at home and it links to my home pc. I use a second nic card and hub off that to allow more 4 other pc's at home internet access. However the only thing that ties my home pc to the net is the mac address of the nic in my home pc. The rest of the config is basically dhcp which includes dns. Therefore the user could have their nic set for dhcp and just come and go as they please.

 

[scroce]

i remember back in one of my nt4 classes, we set up different hardware profiles - is this what you're referring to? The machine would pause in the middle of the boot process and allow you to choose between different programs of your own creation (like home and office) and then load the appropriate drivers for each.

So then the idea i'm getting is to create two separate hardware profiles, one with the onboard nic configured for the office network with the pcmcia disabled, and the second with the onboard nic disabled, but enabling a pcmcia configured for the cable modem settings.

Am I right - if so - where do you go in win2k pro to set that up. How much more water would there be in the ocean if it weren't for sponges?