Configure An Alternative

By Konstantinos Karagiannis

If you’ve taken a notebook from the office to your home or a customer’s site, you may have experienced the frustration of having to change networking configurations each time. Rather than having a pre-assigned static IP address for everyone on the LAN, most networks today implement the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which gives out an address on request. But some mobile workers often move between both types of networks, DHCP and non-DHCP. The Alternate Configuration settings in Windows XP make this much easier. Right-click on your network connection and choose Properties. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP); click on the Properties button. Select Obtain an IP address automatically on the General tab to set up DHCP, and select the Alternate Configuration tab. Click on User configured, then enter the information for your fixed-IP (non-DHCP) network configuration.