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I own a Dell Inspiron 9300 Laptop. It has a built in WiFi and a 10/100 Ethernet port. I have XP Pro installed.

Question... Can I assign two entirely separate workgroup names, IP Address, Gateway, Subnet, etc.

I want to access my wireless gateway for home PC's on wiFi connection and separately access my Windows 2003 small Business server via the Ethernet cable.

My Win SB Server has an entirely different workgroup name, IP address, etc.

I would also ask the same about my old Asus A7N8XE with the dual NIC's and XP Pro

Thanks in advance. REDDER out.

There's nothing separating your WiFi from your wired network (assuming that your wireless router is also in charge of your wired network, as is the case in 99.9% of installations). The air is just a different medium than copper wire -- Ethernet doesn't care, hence the \"ether\" part of the name.

In other words, unless you have to physically distinct networks sharing no equipment whatsoever, you need do absolutely nothing.

[edit]I just noticed that you said both machines have different gateways. Does this imply separate devices? If so, select the two network devices in your XP machine's Network Devices control panel, right click, and click Bridge Connections.[/edit]

Thank you for the reply DCrazy.

I will try to clarify the config of each network. I do have two separate networks in this case. My question will be rephrased again below the following system details.

I have a home network of 6 PC's and the Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop in different rooms of my house all connected to a Wireless Router with 4 ethernet ports (cat5) as well as an extra 16 port switch in the gaming room. (2 PC's plus ports for any friends that bring systems over.

The IP range for the home system is the common 192.168.123.xx1 thru xx7
The gateway is 192.168.123.254
The subnet mask is 255.255.255.0
The workgroup name is WORKGROUP.

I also have a separate system with Windows Small Business Server installed.

The IP range for the server system is 192.168.001.001
The gateway is 192.168.001.254
The subnet mask is 255.255.254.0
The workgroup name is SERVER.

I want to keep the SB Server as an entirely different network with another 4 port switch to add PC's to this network.

The Dell 9300 has XP Pro, an Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection and also has a Broadcom 440X 10/100 Integrated Controller. I currently use the wireless connection to access my home network. I do not use the NIC connection at this time.

Can I configure the Broadcom NIC to access the Server and keep my separate wireless connection for my home network and simply choose which connection I wish to use on my laptop via a shortcut to each config or something like that?

The same goes for my Asus A7N8X-E. It has two NIC's. Can I assign a different IP Config to each and choose which connection I wish to use.

This is not intended to bridge the two systems together... rather to provide a way for me to choose which network I wish to access and then work inside of that specific network.

A more simple way of asking this question could be... In Win XP Pro f I assign TCP IP, etc to my wireless connection... does that globally assign that config to all NIC connections... or can I assign individual connection to each respective NIC?

Yes, but you can only be on one workgroup at a time, I believe. That should be the only setting you'd have to change every time - and I think even XP requires a reboot on it. But it's still better than changing your ip's every time too.

Thanks CapM.

I was hoping that the workgroup was not global. Perhaps I can rename the workgroup on my home network to match the server. This will not keep them totally separate as planned.

Can anyone else weigh in on this and give me other options?

Well, that depends, do both networks have seperate internet access points or does only one have it? You could combine the two networks and set up a domain, it would require a bit of configuration... Just password the resources you want protected. If they both have internet connects, you can still do this just get a hotbrick (load balancing router) to combine the two internet connects.

You could try to set up the same domain on both networks seperately, that may work, but you may need another server for the domain on the second network.

doublepost monster

Under windows XP you should be able to use dual LAN. Each adapter will have it's own IP address, which will reference the appropriate network.

Theres more to it than that, though if the workgroups are different. If the workgroups were the same, then it'd work fine.

The server is not connected to the internet.

The server does have a different workgroup name, ip, gateway, subnet assigned to it.

I have googled several wording variations on dual nic config, multi-homed PC's, etc.

I have not found a complete answer yet. There is a lot of router, sybase, gateway stuff. That is not my goal here.

I simply want to use the wireless connection on my laptop to access the internet. i want the 10/100 NIC to access my server. I would like to do this without placing the server in an IP range in the home/internet workgroup.

I was hoping that I could just set separate network connection configs and make shortcuts to each and choose them as needed.

if you have two NICs, then its a breeze.

just make sure you leave out the gateway info for the NIC that is connected to the wired lan, it may not be connected, but if its there, XP will try routing thru it. You might find things easiers if you used static IP's on the wired lan, and have that use a seperate subnet(ie if the wireless is using 192.1.x.x, have the wired lan use 192.2.x.x).

I've found XP has a tendency to route IP traffic thru private ranged IP's before public ones, regardless of how you've set up the priorities for the NICs.


I have an A7N8X with two nics in a similar set up.