Set An IP Address From The Command Prompt In Windows

Rather than use the old connection properties dialog in Windows you can open up a command prompt and use the netsh to set up all sorts of network specific settings. The most useful part of this is that you can create a bat file that will allow you to quickly change your local IP address very quickly.

To see a list of the network connections available you can use the following command.

netsh interface show interface

This runs the netsh program, in the interface context, and shows the interfaces available. There are lots of other contexts to chose from, just type netsh and then ? to see a list of commands. If you type in netsh and hit enter key you will see the prompt change to netsh meaning that you are in that program mode. Just type exit or bye to exit.

You can also ask for information about individual interfaces by using the name parameter.

netsh interface show interface name="Local Area Connection"

To inform a network interface that you want to change its IP address you need to call it by the network alias. Local Area Connection is usually the default, but if you have more than one network port (wired or wireless) then you should double check this.

To set the IP address of a network alias to run DHCP use the following.

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp

To set the IP address manually use the following.

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.0.10 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1

The static parameter needs three items. The IP that the connection is to be set to, the network mask and the gateway.

In this way, if you travel a lot and want to turn on or off DHCP at the touch of a button then you can create a series of bat files that use these commands.