Some days ago I made a blog post about how you can replace diskpart.exe with the new cmdlets in Windows PowerShell v3. Now my next goal was to replace netsh with PowerShell.

Microsoft offers a lot of new cmdlets for networking tasks lets see what we have here. We got a lot of new PowerShell modules which are related to networking.

Now the two modules which sound really interesting are

NetAdapter
NetTCPIP

lets check which cmdlets are included

Get-Command -Module NetAdapter

 Get-Command -Module NetTCPIP

Now lets start with NetAdpater.

List all Network Adapters

 Get-NetAdapter

Just list Wireless Network Adapters

 Get-NetAdapter -Name *Wireless*

Get more information VLAN ID, Speed, Connection status

 Get-NetAdapter | ft Name, Status, Linkspeed, VlanID

Get driver information

 Get-NetAdapter | ft Name, DriverName, DriverVersion, DriverInformation, DriverFileName

Get adapter hardware information. This can be really usefull when you need to know the PCI slot of the NIC.

 Get-NetAdapterHardwareInfo

Disable and Enable a Network Adapter

 Disable-NetAdapter -Name "Wireless Network Connection"
Enable-NetAdapter -Name "Wireless Network Connection"

Rename a Network Adapter

 Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Wireless Network Connection" -NewName "Wireless"

Now with the NetTCPIP PowerShell module we can work with IP settings

Get IP and DNS address information

 Get-NetAdapter -Name "Local Area Connection" | Get-NetIPAddress

Get IP address only

 (Get-NetAdapter -Name "Local Area Connection" | Get-NetIPAddress).IPv4Address

Get DNS Server Address information

 Get-NetAdapter -Name "Local Area Connection" | Get-DnsClientServerAddress

Set IP Address

 New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "Wireless" -IPv4Address 10.0.1.95 -PrefixLength "24" -DefaultGateway 10.0.1.1

or if you want to change a existing IP Address

 Set-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "Wireless" -IPv4Address 192.168.12.25 -PrefixLength "24"

Remove IP Address

 Get-NetAdapter -Name "Wireless" | Remove-NetIPAddress

Set DNS Server

 Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias "Wireless" -ServerAddresses "10.10.20.1","10.10.20.2"

Set interface to DHCP

 Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceAlias "Wireless" -Dhcp Enabled

Now with this basic knowledge we can replace some of the basic netsh commands and ipconfig

netsh

ipconfig
netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection" newname="Management"
netsh interface ipv4 set address "Management" static 192.168.10.101 255.255.255.0 192.168.10.1

Windows PowerShell

Get-NetAdapter
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Local Area Connection" -NewName "Management"
New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "Management" -IPv4Address 192.168.10.101 -PrefixLength "24" -DefaultGateway 192.168.10.1

10 thoughts on “Replace netsh with Windows PowerShell – Basic network cmdlets”

Hi,
I have PowerShell 3.0 but don’t see these modules.
Do I need to download them?

maybe you have started PowerShell v2? Try to start powershell with “powershell.exe -Version 3.0″

Checked again its version 3.0.

PS C:\Users\gabbay> get-host

Name : ConsoleHost
Version : 3.0
InstanceId : 5988fa36-2f54-43ce-99cd-3cb9a6dd9748
UI : System.Management.Automation.Internal.Host.InternalHostUserInterface
CurrentCulture : en-US
CurrentUICulture : en-US
PrivateData : Microsoft.PowerShell.ConsoleHost+ConsoleColorProxy
IsRunspacePushed : False
Runspace : System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.LocalRunspace

Do you run PowerShell v3 in Windows 8 or Windows 7.
I used Windows 8

Both: Win 7 SP1 and 2008 R2 SP1

Looks like it is just working with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 at the moment. Maybe with the final Version of PowerShell v3 it could work with Windows 7 but I would not bet my Money

Thanks

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Thomas,

This is a great post to come across and read about the two new Modules described.

I’m using PowerShell Version 2, on windows 7. When querying for the modules present in my set-up, I see an empty 2nd column, that shows the commands in the module.

PowerCLI C:\pcli> Get-Module -ListAvailable

This is o/p from my powershell cmd.
ModuleType Name ExportedCommands
———- —- —————-
Manifest PSNetAdapterConfig {}
Manifest AppLocker {}
Manifest BitsTransfer {}
Manifest PSDiagnostics {}
Manifest TroubleshootingPack {}

Can you tell me what could have gone wrong, which is why it’s not showing that.

This guides are made for PowerShell v3 on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

Replace netsh with Windows PowerShell – Basic network cmdlets