Introduction to NetSwitcher for Windows

NetSwitcher for Windows

What is NetSwitcher?

NetSwitcher is a utility which addresses a problem in Windows 95 which afflicts users who need to connect to more than one network. For example, if you regularly work in two different locations and use a notebook computer with an Ethernet card, you may need to have different IP addresses, netmasks, gateways, hostname, etc… Microsoft’s Network Control Panel allows you to change these but it is a manual, time consuming, and error prone process. NetSwitcher solves this problem by “memorizing” your networking setups and allowing you to restore them when you need to change hookups. If your new setup requires a reboot, NetSwitcher will prompt you to reboot. If, however, a reboot is not required, then unlike the Network Control Panel, no reboot will be requested. Remember that if a reboot is required it is because Windows 95 requires the reboot before the changes you made are effective. Please direct any complaints about this to Microsoft directly.

NetSwitcher also solves a problem with Microsoft’s Dial-Up Networking utility in Windows 95. If you have more than one ISP (Internet Service Provider) where you have to use a different domain name server (DNS) for each one, then NetSwitcher will change this part of your setup for you without requiring a reboot. You may say, “Oh, the Dial-Up Networking connection setup menu has a place for me to specify the DNS address for each connection. Why can’t I just use that?” Well, you can use that, but it doesn’t work if you have a DNS server configured in the NETWORK Control Panel. So you need to change your Network Control Panel settings each time you want to use a different ISP, and do a reboot for it to take effect. Or, you can use NetSwitcher to change this setting for you. If you don’t use a LAN based DNS server, then you can leave the DNS server in the NETWORK Control Panel blank and the Dial-Up Networking utility will work for you.

NetSwitcher is a SHAREWARE program and is Copyright © 1996 by J. W. Hance. It is distributed freely for your evaluation. You are granted a 15 day temporary license so that you may evaluate NetSwitcher in your environment. After that time, the evaluation license expires and you then have two choices.

1. You may discontinue using NetSwitcher and you are under no further obligation.
2. You may license NetSwitcher by paying the license fee.