Is it possible to configure a virtual network interface on Windows7?

Question

On linux you can set up a virtual interface using

ifconfig eth0:0 ....

There's these questions:

How do you create a virtual network interface on Windows?

virtual network interface for windows

But they talk about vpn or loopback. VPN wont work in my situation as I'm trying to talk to a machine I don't have control over that sits on a hardwired subnet, which is not the one I get via dhcp. Loopback doesn't work as it doesn't actually talk to the physical device.

There's a hack on WinXP that lets you override dhcp by hacking the registry, but it was disabled in Win7 for security reasons.

Answer 1

For the record, the only solution we found at $WORK that actually solved the problem on Win7 (embedded) is a custom MUX (multiplexer) driver derived from source from Microsoft. That let us set up two different virtual adapters with the different configurations.

AddIPAddress doesn't let you add a static address to an adapter using DHCP in Win7 (it works in XP, but they disabled it in Vista).

Answer 2

AddIPAddress can be used to add a new IP address (and subnet mask) to an existing network adaptor. This should let you talk to a computer on a different subnet to the default.