  The response of a mesoscopic homogeneous superconducting wire, connected with
bulk normal metal reservoirs, is theoretically investigated as function of the
applied voltage. The finite relaxation length of the nonequilibrium
quasiparticle distribution function $\bar{L_E}$ is included where we assumed
that our wire is in the dirty limit. We found that {\it both} symmetric and
asymmetric states can exist which are characterized by a stationary symmetric
and asymmetric distribution of the order parameter with respect to the center
of the wire. Current voltage characteristics of the wire with length
$L>\bar{L_E}$ being in the symmetric state show a pronounced S-behavior. The
asymmetric state may exist only for voltages larger than some critical value
and coexist with the symmetric state in a finite voltage interval. For wires
with $L \sim \bar{L_E}$ the asymmetric state survives up to higher values of
the voltage than the symmetric one and may exist both in the voltage and the
current driven regimes. We propose an experiment to observe reversible
switching between those stationary symmetric and asymmetric states.
