Patent ID: 7756980

Claim:
In a computing environment, a method comprising: displaying, in a user interface on a display device, a collection of channels wherein each channel corresponds to a different type of network, the collection of channels comprising at least an Internet channel for connecting to the Internet and a public channel for connecting to nearby users, wherein one or more sets of network settings are associated with each of the channels, wherein each of the one or more sets of network settings is stored in a single file such that a channel may be added to the collection of channels by receiving a new file; upon a user selecting one of the channels displayed in the user interface, accessing the file corresponding to a first set of network settings associated with the selected channel and applying the first set of network settings from the file to connect to the type of network corresponding to the selected channel; after connecting to the type of network corresponding to the selected channel, detecting that the user has changed a network setting manually; querying the network driver for current network settings; receiving the current network settings from the network driver; and comparing the current network settings to the network settings associated with each channel to determine whether the current network settings correspond to one of the network settings associated with one of the channels such that upon determining that the current network settings do not correspond to any of the network settings associated with each channel, the user is prompted to store the current network settings as the network settings for a new channel.