Ethernet, Cable Modems, Docking Stations and Laptops

situation:

1 Laptop
2 docking stations.

1 docking station at employee's home, other at the office.

The office has an ethernet LAN

The Laptop has a built in NIC, a built in modem, as well as two extra slots for PCMCIA cards.

MAIN OBJECTIVE: to make it as easy as possible for the employee to transition use of computer from home to office.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE:

employee would like to take advantage of cable modem access at home for fast internet connectivity.

PROPOSED(yet still somwhat muddy) SOLUTION:

Put 1 docking station in each location. That will allow the employee to plug in their laptop and use peripherals like 19in monitors, mouse, and various printers.

The confusion is surrounding the LAN vs. Cable modem. I imagine the laptop will be configured such that it has normal access to the office LAN. Since there is a nic already installed, once configured, all need be done is plug in the RJ45 connection when at the office and the employee would have LAN connectivity.

But what happens when the employee is at home and wants to use her private cable modem connection? it is my understanding that a cable modem requires a NIC card, but the on board NIC will already be configured for the Office LAN.

Since I have open PCMCIA slots, do I purchase a PCMCIA ethernet adapter for dedicated use to the cable modem when the employee is at home? Can this be done?

I've also heard rumours of a PCMCIA cable modem - is there such a thing?


Requesting ideas. I may have made some incorrect assumptions - if so feel free to point them out.

Thank you.

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You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish.....

They should be able to log into both no problem. Each docking station should have its own settings.
I use a laptop for work and home. I dont use a docking station and I can log into my lan at work and use my cable modem at home.
I just dont log into the domain at home by hitting esc when it comes up with my login for work.
Thats that.

If the LAN at work and the Cable modem at home are both using DHCP to assign the IP address, you will have no problems. However if you use static IP addressing at work and DHCP at home you will encounter problems, a Router may be your best solution. As far as I know, a docking station just makes the connections eaiser, but will not change addressing problems.

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ceh383,

you hit on one of the issues here. The LAN at work does not use DHCP. Everyone is assigned a static IP address.

this laptop not only has a built in NIC, but also a slot for a PCMCIA.

I'm wondering if it is possible to to use one when connecting to the LAN, and then a PCMCIA when at home to connect to cable modem.



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You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish.....

I don't see why you couldn't do it that way. It would be like having two NICs in in a regular pc. You could set up hardware profiles for work and home so both NICs wouldn't be active at the same time.

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If you are running Windows NT at work (or Novell 4x or higher for that matter), you could carve out a couple of addresses and start a DHCP pool (unless you have an application that requires static addresses). That would simplify the problem and eliminate having to get duplicate hardware. Setting up DHCP is EASY.

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P933, 133MHZ FSB, 256M RAM
Ultra 160, 18.2GB Cheetah
Annihilator Pro, SBLIVE, DVD, FPS SOUND
MS Force Feedback, Cable Modem.
AKA- The ultimate gaming machine.

i can see how DHCP would theoretically be easier.

What determines the scope of addresses you can use?

I guess it becomes apparent when you go into the DHCP applet on the NT4 server.


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You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish.....