You can use this procedure to start the network shell and enter a netsh context.

To enter a netsh context

  1. Open command prompt.

  2. At the command prompt, type netsh, and then press ENTER.

  3. Type one of the values from the following table, and then press ENTER.

Netsh contexts

Following are the values you can type to enter a netsh context.

To enter this context Type

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) client

dhcpclient

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server

dhcp

Health Registration Authority (HRA)

nap hra

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

http

Interface (IPv4 and IPv6)

interface

Internet Authentication Service (IAS). IAS is renamed to Network Policy Server.

nps

Internet Protocol security

ipsec

Network Access Protection (NAP) client

nap

Network Bridge

bridge

Network Input Output (NETIO)

netio

Network Policy Server (NPS)

nps

Remote Access

ras

Routing

routing

Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

rpc

Windows Firewall

firewall

Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

advfirewall

Windows Hypertext Transfer Protocol (WinHTTP)

winhttp

Windows Internet Name Service (WINS)

wins

Windows Sockets (WINSOCK)

winsock

Wired Local Area Network (LAN)

lan

Wireless Local Area Network (LAN)

wlan

Additional information

  • To enter a context, you can type only enough letters in the context name to allow netsh to uniquely identify the context. For example, to enter the winhttp context from the netsh prompt (that is, netsh>), you can type winh, and then press ENTER.

  • Some of these contexts are not available at the netsh prompt unless you have previously installed the server role, role service, feature, or other technology. For example, the DHCP server context netsh dhcp is not available at the netsh prompt until after you install the DHCP server role.

  • Many of the contexts listed above have one or more subcontexts. Subcontexts contain netsh commands that can be run only within the subcontext. For example, to run the add scope command, you must be within the server subcontext of the dhcp context:
    netsh dhcp server add scope parameters
    Where parameters are the properties of the scope that you can configure with the command.

  • Network Policy Server (NPS) was formerly known as Internet Authentication Service, and is the Microsoft implementation of a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server and proxy, as well as a client health policy server for Network Access Protection (NAP).

  • Netsh Overview
  • Formatting Legend