Wireless settings in Windows

[vancamt76]

We are using the windows client to configure and manage our wireless cards. I was wondering if there was a setting in windows to disable the wireless card when the computer is docked using the LAN line. I briefly looked through the settings, but did not see anything relevant. We have a high number of LAN users who are also on wireless that are using up wireless bandwidth. If windows cannot accomplish this task, does anyone know of a good client that can do this?

[rduke]

Our guys installed a service that checks for a LAN connection and shuts down the wireless zero config service if it finds that LAN connection operational. I am not sure how they accomplished this, but I can check to see. Broadcom has a setting in the wireless drivers called "disable upon wired connect". For some models of laptops it works great, but does not work at all on a few models. Also, we looked a hardware profiles, but it seemed to difficult to manage. I have not found a comparable setting in other wireless cards.

Randy

[Roman Rodichev]

Windows automatically assigns better routing metric to routes via Wired NIC vs Wireless NIC. This makes sure that when you have both Wired and Wireless connection all of your traffic will flow via Wired NIC and Wireless should stay idle. The only time traffic will attempt to use the Wireless NIC is when the destination IP is on the connected wireless IP subnet or when something is attempting to send traffic to the user using Wireless NIC IP.

Try doing "route print" in Windows, and you should see 0.0.0.0 default route preferred via the Wired LAN because it has a lower metric.

[George Stefanick]

this may be of some use to you ...

http://forums.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=netprof&forum=Wireless%20-%20Mobility&topic=Security%20and%20Network%20Management&CommCmd=MB%3Fcmd%3Dpass_through%26location%3Doutline%40^1%40%40.2cd28a97/5#selected_message

[rduke]

While it is true regarding how Windows XP uses automatic metrics, we debated the issue of whether it does any harm or not to have both connected. Generally it does not waste bandwidth, but it does waste resources. It eats up your DHCP addresses with no benefit, and it is more difficult to tell what your client load actually is. We dropped our wireless client connections by over 300 computers by disabling wireless when LAN attached.

Randy

[gamccall]

WZC does not offer this feature, but several third party products do, including Cisco CSSC.