Multiple tools exist to manage and switch network profiles based on the physical location:

• metaconf (written by Gustavo Niemeyer): a generic tool multiple configurations, which can use arping to detect the location
• guessnet: supports ARP/wireless/pppoe probes
• divine: uses ARP requests
• whereami: allows to run a various number of detection hooks, including divine

More on the Network discovering... too many options thread from the debian-laptop ML.