I use 2 simple batch commands to enable and disable my network connections on our 4 home computers:
1- netsh interface set interface name="Local Area Connection" admin=enabled
2- netsh interface set interface name="Local Area Connection" admin=disabled
And these are triggered by clicking on an icon in Windows' "Quick Launch" bar.
For security concerns, I like to turn off the network connection when such a connection is not needed (especially after seeing so much unexplainable activity using Wireshark). Our systems do not suffer from being disconnected most of the time.
I would like to raise the level of performance by one notch, but at this point I recognize that I do not have the Windows programming skills. I would like to maintain a list in a file of those programs that I select to expect to have the network available, and upon closing one of these programs, a process would refer to the list when I turn off one of these programs. The process would then determine if any other of the programs on the list are also running. If it determines that none are, the final act of the process would be to disable the network connection. This would frequently occur after all browsers are closed.
I see this as a means to minimizing the network connection time of each computer, without adding the additional step of hitting the Quick Launch icon, as I presently do.
I don't know if this can be done completely from the batch command world. I also do not know how a program would determine which programs are presently running. I have a lot of programming experience, from a few machine languages to many structured languages, but have been frightened away from Windows programming. Any advice?