Two LAN connections, One PC

[Randell Floyd]

One laptop
One wireless network from my router
One ethernet fixed socket connection in the conservatory

The wireless connection would never reach the conservatory, so my father had the ethernet connection in the conservatory enabled.

Now is there any simple way to switch from the wireless connection to the wired connection when moving about from conservatory to other parts of the house?

Many thanks

[rickyboy]

If you're using XP, open the Network Connections folder from the start menu then select Advanced -> Advanced Settings from the menu bar. Here you can specify the order in which your connections are used.

If you put the wired connection above the wireless one your PC will use the wired one when available otherwise it will try to use the wireless one.

Is that what you want?

[Paul Adams]

If you're using XP (SP2) then the different speed connections get different "metric" values, so if a wired connection is available it should be preferred automatically.

Typically, wired connections get a metric of 20 and wireless get 25 (54Mbps) or 30 (11Mbps) - you can check by typing "route print" at a command prompt.

So long as your wired & wireless connections end up on the same network and have the same default gateway there shouldn't be a problem.
(If you were multi-homed on 2 different networks and each connection had a different default gateway then you could end up with bad performance.)