Seamless switch from wired to wireless

[WyomingKnott]

I have a company-issued notebook machine that spends most of its life in a docking station, using the wired network connection. The wireless connection to our secured LAN is also open.

When I remove the machine from the dock, I lose most of my network connections. In one sense this is reasonable: the Putty sessions, ISQL windows, even Microsoft Outlook had connections through the wire, and these are broken. But it would be really nice if they failed back to the wireless connection, not at the individual application level but through something I set up at the OS level.

Yes, I could disconnect the cable from my dock and all my connections, all of the time, would be wireless. But that is slow and inelegant.

Is it possible to set up my network connections so that apps can basically see the two as interchangeable? So that if one gets cut off the other is used seamlessly? Something like channel bonding?

I am running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit version.

 

[ittimjones]

I'm gunna say no, due to authentication protocols.

 

[COLGeek]

WK, Windows will manage the network as you are suggesting auto-magically (to some degree). It will also use the stronger/faster network connection automatically if more than one is active at a time.

I think the loss of connectivity you see when going from wired to wireless mode is a result of the wireless network connection establishing itself and those sessions you previously had are timing out.

I, too, have a notebook/docking station at my office. Our AD config disables the wireless adapter when docked. That could be disabled and both the wired and wireless would be active at the same time. Configuring your system from this might help when transitioning.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Your Geekiness
"AD config" ? Whassat?

I'm pretty sure that both connections are active at the same time. Three images below to support that guess:

 

[COLGeek]

Active Directory. We configure our security settings to disable the wireless adapter when docked.

 

[COLGeek]

Yep, it does appear that both are active. I am pondering this now......

 

[ittimjones]

Different MAC's and different IP's on each NIC. You're using putty for SSH, right?
As far as the authentication/encryption protocols are are concerned, you're using 2 different computers, cause you have 2 different LAN adapters. If the connection from 1 goes down, so do all the sessions corresponding w/ it...

 

[WyomingKnott]

ittimjones

That makes sense for the putty connections. Don't know about the SQL connections, whether they are secured this way or not. But the authentication being link-dependent makes sense.

Can I test this by using, say, telnet to a machine that will accept it and switching over? If the problem is the authentication as you say, could I expect an unauthenticated Telnet session to stay up?

EDIT: Nope, Telnet dies too. There isn't any authentication on that, is there? So it might be possible to have those unsecured connections survive, even if the authenticated Putty ones are toast.

 

[COLGeek]

The more I think about it, I agree with ittimjones. I think all secured sessions will be lost during the network mode transition.

Does Outlook survive the changeover?

 

[WyomingKnott]

No, I have to close and re-open Outlook. And, as I edited above, Telnet goes dead. Instantly, when I kill the wired connection.

 

[COLGeek]

Even if you could force both connections to be active at the same time, only one of them would be in use at a time. Seems the only way to bypass the limitations discussed would be to have 2 sessions of each app that could be directed to the 2 network devices. Not feasible.

I wonder if you could "bond" the 2 network connections and then effectively use them both simultaneously? I can't replicate, so I can't try it. It may be a moot experiment as I am not sure you can "bond" (or combine) mixed media types.

 

[bill001g]

Sound like you have solved the first issue of actually having the devices active which is tough for some machines.

I am going to bet your IP is changing when you move networks. This will cause drops on anything that is session based. Some microsoft things will reconnect using cached credentials but I will have to defer to those who know microsoft more than I.

There is no simple solution to this problem. Most solution use methods to make it appear as you IP does not change. One of the better methods is called "ip mobility". It is mostly used to solve the issue of not dropping VoIP calls so it is very robust. For simplicity I will say this is a VPN solution but it is much more complex.
The other way you could in theory do this..we do it on servers... Is to run a routing protocol on both networks. You would use a VIP (virtual ip) to represent the IP of the PC. You would then advertise this to the other networks as your identity. When the primary link fails the remote thing should detect it and know because of the routing protocol to use the second connection to go to your address.

All depends how much effort your IT org wants to do.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Well, the IT organization doesn't know of a solution.

Best Answer is tough. ittimjones was right, it don't work. If I looked into bil001g's suggestion and found a solution, then that would be the BA. "Given what I know now..."