Mobile Net Switch

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Have you heard of Mobile Net Switch? If you haven’t and you find yourself traveling a lot with your laptop, constantly jumping on different networks (as a lot of consultants do), then you have to take a look at this utility. The utility allows you define a profile for each network you attach to. This allows you to make settings that are specific to that network and easily switch back and forth between profiles.

For example, let’s say you are a contractor and you have a network at home (wireless even).  Then you go to your client during the day and they have certain networking settings that you need to set in order to get your job done (maybe some proxy settings, mapped drives, etc.).  Oh, and client doesn’t allow wireless connections in their office (not even just turned on).  So, without this tool you either go through the steps of turning the proxy on and off (that’s if you don’t have one at your home, in which case you’d have to alter the values by hand), remap the drives (hope the drive map “conventions” doesn’t require you to map to a letter at the client that you normally have set up at home), and then shut down your wireless adapter.  You could write a script for this, or you could just pickup a copy of Mobile Net Switch. 

You create a profile for the client (say “MyClientA”) and one for home (“Home”).  You can set a up a LOT of settings specific to each profile and then switching is as easy as a right-click away.  It will automatically change the proxy settings for you, remap the drives and shut down/enable your wireless adapter!  Here’s a list of some of the things that can differ per profile:

  • Proxy settings
  • User name and password to send when authentication requests are made to remote resources (this is so nice for when your laptop is not a member of the domain at the client)
  • Drive mappings
  • Network settings (which adapters to turn on, their IP address, DHCP settings, etc.)
  • Browser settings (start page, connection, Internet settings for security, etc.)
  • Dialing rules
  • ISA Firewall client.
  • Desktop settings (wallpaper, display settings, numlock and volume)
  • Default Printer (all printers must be setup as usual, but this switches the default based on your active profile)
  • Mapi profile (nice for exchange at work, personal folders at home)
  • Timezone!
  • Dynamic SMTP (one of the main reasons I got this was because my ISP demands I use their SMTP server when I’m on their network (home), but I can’t use that when I’m not, so I have to use my mail providers SMTP.  this keeps me from having to manually switch this!)
  • A host file per profile!
  • Run scripts (you can attach a script to run either before or after the profile is run to switch your settings.  You can have a global script or a profile dependant script).

You can even set up profiles to prompt you for a password before activation! 

The best thing is that the software is pretty cheap and you get ALL future updates!  It’s just a necessity for people who jump on lots of different networks.

Thanks to TomB for introducing me to this product a couple of years ago.  I just reinstalled it when I did my tablet refresh and thought I’d post about it.