Assigning IP addresses on a user basis?

daztrouk · 22 Apr 2013 at 08:50

I know that local IP addresses are usually assigned on a machine basis, but is there anyway I can assign IP addresses on a user level within windows 7? I have one NIC, which I have assigned to have 2 different IP addresses. I have two users who make use of a PC. What I would like to happen, is for user 1 to login to the machine, and to be given ip address 192.169.0.3 (as an example) on the network, but when user 2 logs in on the same PC, they are given a different IP address. Both users would leave an application running within their windows session, so both IP addresses would need to work at the same time. Is there anyway of doing this on windows 7? Would i be able to do this using only a single NIC, but assigning it multiple IP addresses, or would i need to buy another NIC? Cheers

marc2003 · 22 Apr 2013 at 09:06

i'm fairly certain that is not possible, even with multiple NICs. any network configuration changes will apply to the machine. there is no concept of user accounts as far as that is concerned.

vmware with a guest operating system configured to use bridged networking would achieve what you want but it might be considered overkill.

Antar Bolaeisk · 22 Apr 2013 at 09:10

Maybe have a script run at user login to change the ip address, a different script for each user? Will they be logged in as local administrators?

marc2003 · 22 Apr 2013 at 09:11

Antar Bolaeisk said:
Maybe have a script run at user login to change the ip address, a different script for each user?

that's not going to work as the OP wants both the users running apps concurrently.

daztrouk · 22 Apr 2013 at 09:27

Cheers for the help so far guys

I’d already setup virtual machines within VMWare to test this out on, but the program didn’t perform very well within a virtual environment for whatever reason.

Is windows 7 the limiting factor here then? Would I be able to achieve this within windows server 2008/2012?

Antar Bolaeisk · 22 Apr 2013 at 09:32

Ah, didn't read the whole thing.

Could you install a second NIC and use something like this to ensure that each user uses a specific NIC for their session of the program?

daztrouk · 22 Apr 2013 at 11:08

Antar Bolaeisk said:
Ah, didn't read the whole thing.

Could you install a second NIC and use something like this to ensure that each user uses a specific NIC for their session of the program?

Ahhh, working perfectly now using this, exactly what i was after :cool:

Thanks for your help, appreciated

daztrouk · 22 Apr 2013 at 11:49

Out of interest, should i expect poorer performance, in regards to higher CPU usage and maybe network performance, when assigning multiple IP's to 1 NIC over actually having 2 individual NIC's within the PC?

Antar Bolaeisk · 23 Apr 2013 at 20:22

Glad it worked for you. Daft question, how are you assigning multiple ip address to the one NIC?

marc2003 · 23 Apr 2013 at 21:59

just goto the IPv4 properties of your adapter and click on the advanced button.

Antar Bolaeisk · 23 Apr 2013 at 22:03

Ah, cool, been in there a few times but never noticed that top area before.