How To Connecti Windows XP to Multiple Networks: Office and Home

Go to:

1. Start>Control Panel>Network Connections
2. Right-click on Local Are connection or Wireless Connection, depending on which one you use.
3. Left-Click on Properties
4. Right-Click on TCP/IP, left click on Propertties
5. Make sure IP addresses are configures for DHCP, not manual

If all other systems at another location 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
computer.

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" :

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. This will be indicated in the "Status" of your LAN connection:.

Your alternate configuration should be configured as the local network is. For example, if the local network uses a 10.0.0.1 schema, your manual IP address could be 10.0.0.25. If the network uses a 192.168.1.1 schema, then your IP address could be 192.168.1.25 and so forth.

The default gateway and DNS will be the value of the schema used, 10.0.0.1, 192.168.1.1, etc.