How do I prioritize one network interface over another, in the context of 'lower level' windows functions?

Question

Alright so I think I'm at the right SE site... We'll find out in a minute; but my apologies if I'm not. Anyway...

I have a couple of network interfaces on this system ( and a couple at my place of work ); one of these NICs I'll call the 'problem child'...

Order of NICs in my Advanced Settings under [General] Network Connections:

Gigabit 1 Gigabit 2 Hamachi (Remote Access Connections)

Now - to the best of my knowledge; this is the only place in Windows 7 where I can prioritize one network card over another - but apparently it's not the only one.

The [only visible] problem that I'm encountering at the moment, and the one I am here to address - is th fact that in a lower level operation like the windows command line executable 'net view', I end up seeing only results from the Hamachi adapter.

Now - I do have file and printer sharing, as well as network discovery enabled - so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I am so limited.

Bottom line; any suggestions for reordering the NICs priority?

Answer 1

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think theres such thing as network adapter priority. What you do have are logical networks assigned to each one of them (defined by IP address and netmask) and routes.

You should have one default route, also known as default gateway. Any communication attempt with an IP address that does not belong to any of your networks by IP/netmask match will be forwarded to this gateway.

You may also customize routes. For instance, say you have two network adapters:

• Adapter 1 with IP 192.168.0.123 netmask 255.255.255.0
• Adapter 2 with IP 192.168.1.123 netmask 255.255.255.0

Given your gateway is 192.168.0.1, it will always use Adapter 1 to communicate with the Internet, because the IP 192.168.0.1 is in the range of that logical network.

However, you can add custom routes, for instance:

route add 8.8.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 192.168.1.1

Now any attempt to communicate with addresses in range 8.8.0.1 to 8.8.255.254 will use gateway 192.168.1.1, that belongs to the network in Adapter 2.

Following this same logic you can set up network routes where you want it to use your second adapter instead of your default gateway.