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I want to connect my laptop to a wired local network (no Internet access, just access to my other PCs and Home Server) while also maintaining a working connection to my university's wireless Internet. When I plug the Ethernet cable into my laptop after it has established a working connection to the school Internet, Windows 7 displays that it has an Internet connection with the WiFi, and none with the local network, as I would expect.

However, Internet access during this time does not function. It loads for a while (less than 15 seconds) and then tells me it has no Internet access in a web browser. My home network is labeled a 'home' network in Windows 7, and the WiFi as 'public'.

Can I have my PC prioritize the WiFi connection for Internet access and use my wired connection for simple local networking? Or do I just have to pick between Internet access and backing up my computers on the local network?

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  • Please, post your routes (press Ctrl-R -> cmd -> in the opened window route print -> post output here)
    – aland
    Commented Sep 12, 2011 at 21:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You'll need to add the appropriate route entries. There is a decent overview of the process here The process will be similar for your wireless and wired NIC.

  1. How do you setup a host with dual NICs, and connect to dual ethernet networks?

When setting up a dual NIC cards (multi-homed host), only one default gateway should be assigned to one of the two network adapters. If a NIC is used to connect to the Internet, the default gateway should be assigned to that NIC card. For a NIC card that is connected to the LAN, a static routing entry should be entered into the computer's routing table if the host needs to obtain network resources outside of its subnet.

For example, if the NIC interface is assigned to an IP address of 192.168.1.0 network and a router is is used to interconnect it to 10.10.10.0 network, a static routing table must be entered to let the host know how to route packets destined to 10.10.10.0 network. A Linux and Windows machines have a slightly different syntax, but general idea is the same.

On the Windows Box,

C:> ROUTE ADD 10.10.10.0 MASK 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1

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  • Thank you this seems simple enough, would I just use the generic 10.10.10.0, 255.255.255.0, and 192.168.1.1 or would I need to get a computer specific IP address? Also, where could I get a Batch file to preform this action on startup?
    – Jason
    Commented Sep 12, 2011 at 22:20
  • No, your addresses will be specific to your networks. So long as your network is not changing, your route should remain persistent across reboots.
    – OldWolf
    Commented Sep 12, 2011 at 23:20
  • Okay, thank you very much for your help by the way, my last question then is how I go about finding my specific IP addresses that this process requires.
    – Jason
    Commented Sep 12, 2011 at 23:47
  • The default gateway will be assigned to your wifi card, you'll need the static route for your ethernet connection set to however you have your local network setup. Presuming everything is over a local switch and only in the private network, you'd do something like route add 192.168.1.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.(yourIP) for the ethernet card. All of this presupposes that your campus wifi is not assigning private addresses in the same range. In that case, you'd need to change your local IP settings.
    – OldWolf
    Commented Sep 13, 2011 at 0:00

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