Looking for a quick way to share your internet connection with others? This is only useful in some situations these days. Personally, I only used the shared internet connection when I was driving with a friend who had a laptop tied to his smartphone.
My iPad only had Wi-Fi, so I was able to connect to his laptop via Wi-Fi and access the Internet. The only time I used it was when I was staying in a hotel room and they only had a wired Ethernet connection for the internet. I set up my computer and created a personal Wi-Fi network so everyone else can connect their smartphones, tablets, etc.
In this article, I will show you how to share the Internet from a Windows computer. Not that it only worked in certain scenarios.
- Your computer must have more than one network adapter, preferably an Ethernet port and a Wi-Fi card. The 3G / 4G device you connect to your computer can be used in place of the Ethernet port, but you still need a Wi-Fi card.
- It’s always best to share your connection by creating a virtual wireless network. Doing it in any other way is very difficult and almost never works. Don’t worry, I’ve tried and I’m a geek.
- It is best to connect to the Internet through an Ethernet port or a tethered device, and the Wi-Fi network should not be connected to any network.
If you agree with these three points above, then most likely you will be able to establish a general Internet connection. Now let’s get started.
Create a virtual wireless network
The first thing you need to do is make sure your Wi-Fi network is not connected to any network. Why? We want the Wi-Fi network to use the Internet via the Ethernet port or tethered device, so the Wi-Fi network must remain disabled to start.
You can check this by clicking Start and then typing ncpa.cpl and pressing Enter. You should see a red cross next to the icon.
Now we need to open an administrative command prompt window. Click Start, enter a command, then right-click the top result and select Run as administrator.
Next, we need to create our virtual wireless network and launch it. To do this, you need to enter the following commands:
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode = allow ssid = “pickaname” key = “pickapassword” netsh wlan start hostednetwork
As you can see, you can choose an SSID for your new network and also set a password. Whichever SSID you set, this will be the name of the wireless network that appears on other devices. After starting the network, go to Control Panel and open the Network and Sharing Center
You will see the current network you are connected to, in my case it is Ethernet 2. Below you should see a new network that says No network access and Authentication. If you reopen ncpa.cpl or click Change Adapter Settings in the Network and Sharing Center, you will see that Local Area Connection 3 is actually a Microsoft Hosted Network virtual adapter.
Now, in order for the new network to have access to the Internet, we need to set up another network connection. In my example, this would be Ethernet 2. Go ahead and click the blue link for Ethernet 2. You can also go to ncpa.cpl again, right-click on Ethernet 2 and select Properties.
The connection status window will open. Now click the “Properties” button.
Now when you go to the Network and Sharing Center, you will see that the new connection also has Internet access.
This is it! You should now have a functioning wireless network that will allow others to connect and use Ethernet or a tethered connection to access the Internet. Go to any other device and find a new wireless network. Connect using the password you provided and you should be fine.
Please note, if you want to know how many people are connected to your new wireless network, you need to open a command prompt and enter the following command:
netsh wlan show hostednetwork
Finally, if you’ve finished sharing your network connection, you can get rid of the virtual wireless network by entering the following two commands:
netsh wlan stop hostednetwork netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode = disallow
