Multiple Wireless Connections

What brand of laptop do you have. Lenovo/IBM has "Access Connections" which does this. Lenovo sells it for other brands:

Your brand may offer something similar for free. Or check your adapter manufacturer. They typically offer a connection manager as well.

Here's one that I know nothing about:

Many thanks Seaweeds .... so the answer I suppose is, not possible on a 'normal' setup additional software need to access other wireless networks ... mine is an HP notebook BTW

I use Netswitcher for changing configurations at different locations. If it were just the wireless configuration, I would just use WZC in manual mode, or some connection manager that supports "profiles". However, the typical wireless connection manager will not save static IP addresses. I also need to save SMTP server, WINS server, network logins, default printer, and other trivia that I usually manage to forget. Too much work for my aging brain, so I need a program to keep it all organized.

$20 for the license that works forever. However, you have to renew every 2 years to get updates. Checking my laptop, I now have 28 saved locations (mostly my customers). Note that you may need to reboot after switching.

More alternatives, that I know nothing about:

etc...

Many thanks Jeff ... Yup I have a brain the same as yours ... old and tired. ANYTHING to help!!

alternatively - can you use a DHCP server to assign an IP at home that is static?

that way you dont have to change the config...

Huh? that's the way it should work automatically, and use a profile for each connection, unless you have SSID broadcast turned off on your router, and/or your computer set to always connect using these parameters... my guess would be that you turned off ssid broadcast on your router, and since the computer doesn't know what settings to use, it just uses whatever is forced on it...... there are other reasons, but since 99% of the problems are cuz of that, you may want to check that first....

another q, why do you need (Or want) a static ip? all mine are dynamic now, and i had to do some tricks to get rid of em.... (and I run a file server accessible by a browser from the net)

If you are time rich and cash poor you will be able I think to set up a batch file using netsh commands to change whatever network settings you require. I don't know the commands off the top of my head so I can offer no specific advice on the details.

If you are time rich and cash poor you will be able I think to set up a batch file using netsh commands to change whatever network settings you require. I don't know the commands off the top of my head so I can offer no specific advice on the details.

why even mess with them? what currently doesn't work that you even need em? there are dozens of free sites that do static to dynamic for free, and there are thousands of people that use xp/wireless etc without em

OP said "i have a static IP address".

If he has a good DHCP server you can set a static mapping up in that.

Then he can have DHCP on at home as well as everywhere else.

At that point any need to keep changing the laptop config for DHCP on / off has gone away.

my

yup, and my q (see below) was WHY he had one?

I'm sure there may be some reason, (but i've never seen one for needing only static, i'm even running a file server, assesible from the net, a live webcam on my blog, and can remotely program my dvr's, all with dynamic) so what needs/only works with static?

One more dumb idea. If you only have ONE wireless lan that requires static IP's, then you can cheat a little. Setup the wireless connection for DHCP. However, if you dive deeper into the network configuration screens in XP under: Right Click the Wireless device icon and select: Properties -> TCP/IP -> Alternate Config tab Setup your static IP address on the Alternate Config page.

What happens is that your normal default setup is DHCP assigned IP addresses. However, if there's no DHCP server, it will use the static IP address. This will also drive you insane if you have an encryption or DHCP server. Any failure will cause Windoze to assign the static IP to your machine. However, insanity is a small price to pay for the convenience and not having to buy a commercial utility to fix Microsoft's inability to understand how people use wireless.

He could also write a batch file for each of his locations.