internet auto-configuration

[HwagPo]

When I was staying at this hotel, I plugged my laptop (which is a member of my company's AD domain) into the available network cable and instantly all the required internet settings for the hotel's network is applied i.e. proxy, etc. It updated the homepage and even removed the existing proxy server that was already set for my company's network and replace it with their own proxy. Of course when I disconnected, all the settings where back to normal.

How is this possible? I understand that, through google, there is solution that uses .pac files to do the configuration but there has to be a way to distribute the .pac files to the PC that connects to the network. I am not sure if this is what the hotel used coz all I did was plug the network cable into my PC and I got their settings right away. Does anyone know how this is done?

many thanks.

[IcemanND]

if you have IE set to the default of automatically detecting proxy the proxy settings can be done by setting up a autoconfig script on the appropriate server.