Multiple Network Connections at the Same Time on Windows

In my scenario I have one Wireless connection for my Internet and one LAN connection to a small private network of my own with my NAS, PS3 and TV and I want to have them both at the same time. It was a major pain to get this setup working on Windows. When I had both connections enabled my Internet wasn’t working because Windows was routing through the LAN connection even though the Wireless connection had a higher priority set in Network Connections –> Advanced menu –> Advanced settings.

The solution is to go into the Properties of each connection (right click on it) –> select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) –> click Properties -> click Advanced –> uncheck Automatic metric in the bottom and set a number between 1 and 9999 where the smaller the number the higher the connection priority. I have set my Wireless Internet connection to 1 and my LAN connection to 9999 and that works.

I hope this post will save someone else’s precious time in the future.

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Rating: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Comments
Published: Jul 8th, 2009 (Views: 1,408)
Categories: Coding
Tags: , ,
  • Jeff
    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    I have gone through so many attempts to resolve this issue and you come along with a simple fix.

    You just made me very happy.
  • billross
    i have added a second nic to my desktop and connect to two local dhcp routers....i easily have 192.168.xxx on one and 10.10.xx on the other....my problem/question is how do i direct my web browser to open through a specific one while directing my mail client to open thru the other router....and, no, it does not matter how many providers i have... for a start, i just want to be able to direct a specific program thru a specific nic, and i will take it from there.
  • Your application must support choosing which network card to use (I haven't seen a software that does that). Else maybe you could use some third party software to route connections through a specific network based on software that's trying to connect or ports/urls its trying to connect. Maybe you could even do some trickery with the Windows routing table. However I have no experience doing so and unfortunately can't be of much help.
  • Markku Hänninen
    You saved my day, I was so ******* frustrated. I struggled for days and then support engineer in microsoft answers pasted your post about this. Everything rocks now.
  • Jeff
    Works great! Thanks very much.
  • James Brown
    thanks, I've been struggling with this one for ages!!
  • Bob Bobson
    Get a fucking life, geek.
  • I doubt you have one, troll. Get a life instead of writing rude and useless comments.
  • As long as the ip addresses were different and there was no default gateway on the LAN network then this should have been automatic.

    Do you have any form of routing on the LAN?
  • Adrian
    You sir, made my day. Thanks a lot.
  • Ivan Mladenov
    So, in this scenario, you have advantage of both internet connection, e.g. you can download twice as faster?
  • No, because I don't have an internet connection on the LAN network. It might be possible in theory, but I doubt many software applications support choosing which network card to use so that you can set 1 connection for e.g. torrents downloading and the other for web surfing.
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