Using two different networks on one computer?

I was wondering the following today: I was logged into work using the dial-in VPN connection. This effectively means my computer becomes part of the corporate network (obviously).

This however also means I cannot control my Sonos music system any more through my pc, because I'm now on a different network.

So now I was wondering: is it possible to use eg. the fixed ethernet cable to connect to the corporate network, and the wireless ethernet to connect to the home network so I could still control my Sonos? (or reach my home network shares). Please don't tell me to just use the Sonos remote. :P

I'm using both Windows and Mac. Is this possible with both systems, or even at all?

The answer is "it depends".

Some corporate VPN packages will deliberately (and fairly sensibly) set things up so that you can only connect to their network while connected to the VPN. In some cases you can override this behaviour, but often you cannot.

The setting that controls this (on Windows) is the "Use default gateway on remote network", if the VPN setup is a standard Windows VPN one you might be able to turn it off.

http://diaryproducts.net/about/operating_systems/windows/enable_disable_default_gateway_vpn_windows

However even if you can turn it off on your setup, doing so might well break things. If all your corporate machines are on IP addresses within the subnet set for the VPN connection then all will be fine, but if they are not then you need "Use default gateway on remote network" to be set to on, otherwise you won't be able to reach those machines.

On OSX the setting is "Send all traffic oer VPN connection".

You may also breach company policy if you enable split tunneling, as it effectively breaks the corporate defensive perimeter (if there is any such thing any more)

I would advise being careful...

Ah yes, I did mean to mention that too

Ironically the only time I've ever had a worm infection, it was because I connected to a "locked down" corporate VPN. Back in the days when the first SQL Server worms hit. The VPN of course neatly bypassed my firewall

Ah, ok. I hadn't thought of the security issues. Hmm... this sounds like too much hassle and a possible recipe for disaster. Too bad, but I don't think I'll bother then, and just use the remote.

Thanks for the speedy answer!

Have seen that sort of thing happen a lot in environments where mergers and takeovers weren't fully thought through and despite guidance from folks like me, organisations were joined without firewalls despite having widely differing security policies.

Which meant and worm (Slammer was the fun one) would just run free - including through VPN links.

<sigh>

My company makes VPN software, and by default, it's true, your local home networking is disabled while you're connected to the VPN.

The biggest issue is security, as was said already, and the largest complaint that most people have is that they can't print to their home network printers while connected to their company VPN.

My company's software controls this via something known as policies, and it's a server-side configuration controlled by the network administrators. It's possible that, if you have a good relationship with your sysadmin, that their VPN software might have a similar feature, and you could talk your sysadmin into enabling it for your account. On our system, for example, you'd do this on the VPN server by selecting the Policies screen, and enabling the policy Enable Local Networking for the user "Archeon". Or maybe by adding the user "Archeon" to a group of users that already have that policy enabled.

Depending on the kind of VPN system they've got there, it might even be full-featured enough to allow the sysadmin to poke holes in only the ports necessary to control the Sonos system, without risking the company's network security.