How to I use NetSwitcher with my Cable Modem at home and a corporate LAN at work?
A bit of background first. Almost all cable modem system are setup to use DHCP (Obtain IP Address Automatically) and require you to set your computer name to match the name they give you. This makes sure that only customers who are authorized to connect to the system do so and help make sure you get the right IP address for your system. Now with Windows 9x/ME systems it’s no problem to just change the computer name to whatever. Windows doesn’t care and there is no issue with changing it to the cable name or back. The problem comes with Windows NT/2000 where changing the computer name can have an adverse effect on your NT DOMAIN membership at work. Network admins don’t like to have to re-join member workstations to the domain and some are reluctant to provide the required privilege to permit users to do this themselves. Here’s a way around this. Your cable provider might not admit it or even support it but chances are that you do not have to use DHCP to connect with the cable system. If
