Connecting Windows XP to Multiple Networks: Office and Home |
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Are you using at work a notebook computer connected to your company
network ? If your company network uses TCP/IP protocol and a network server, then you will have your notebook most probably configured to get the IP-address via DHCP: Properties of the Network connection : |
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When you verify your
network settings in the Properties of the Network, checking the "Status" of your LAN connection: |
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| you should see that your TCP/IP-address was "Assigned by DHCP" | |
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You
carry your notebook home and connect it to your home-network, to exchange
some files with other computers used in your family. Most probably there will be no server installed at your home or another system able to act as DHCP-server, so Windows XP ( like Windows98, WindowsME and Windows 2000) will now assign an Automatic IP-address: |
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If all other systems at home are also
configured to use this Auto-IP-Address generation, then you can use the network without having to reconfigure the TCP/IP-settings on your notebook. But if you use at home manually assigned IP-addresses (example: 192.168.1.x- range), then you are required to adjust on your notebook the IP-address to match it up with the IP-address range used at home. You have to do this manually on previous versions of Windows. Windows XP allows you to automate this step: In the Properties of Networking, display the Properties of your LAN network connection , display the Properties of the TCP/IP-protocol and select the tab "Alternate Configuration" : |
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By default, Windows XP will assign an
IP-address via Automatic IP-address generation, if no DHCP-server was located on the network. You have now the possibility to change this, to define to use a "User Defined" setting, allowing to define a static IP-address to be used in case that no DHCP-server was located : |
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| This will be indicated in the "Status" of your LAN connection: | |
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