Converting laptop into a wifi router

Well, first assuming, that the laptop has 2 NIC- one with an ethernet port for wired and the other- of course the Wifi ethernet (without this presume this content won’t exist otherwise 😉 )

Now, the next thing- either you get internet from the wired port or to be in some case, you may connect your android phone as wireless tethering and connect through mobile data service. Whatever the case- you basically got 2 interface for setting up the router- the WAN (either the wired or the mobile tethered connection) and the LAN- the wifi ethernet.

This document works good on Windows 7 and 8 (I didn’t test other editions of windows- hope they support too)

Step-1

On “Change adapter settings” find the right WAN adapter. In my case it was a tethered adapter identified as “Local Are Connection 2- Remote NDIS based Internet Sharing”. Right click on it, select “Properties” > Select “Sharing” tab, and put a tick on both the options while selecting “Home Network Connection”- in my case it was “Lenevo easyplus hotspot”.

Step-2

Now it’s time to convert the router configurations on command prompt. Open “cmd”.  Execute the following command-

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=”MyHotSpot” key=”Pa$$w0rd”

Where ssid is the name of your network and key is the password you want users to connect with, its also worth mentioning that the access point is created with WPA2-PSK (AES) encryption.

Now we are ready to start broadcasting our network:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

The last command you will need to know is the show command, it will tell you things like the channel you are on as well as the number of clients connected to your network:

netsh wlan show hostednetwork

Step-3

Now scan from another wifi enabled device to look for “MyHotSpot” SSID. Login with the wifi password. I don’t know, for some reason, some gets the internet and some stuck here, you’re connected to the wifi, but u can’t browse anything.

In order to get a manual fix, check the properties of your “Microsoft Hosted Network Virtual…” adapter that is usually marked with the SSID/MyHotSpot. You can find the network IP. Manually insert the IP, Subnet Mask and Gateway (ofcourse a DNS too) to the wifi device. You should be able to browse.