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I was reading the many differences between Access Point, Bridge, Ad-hoc or hot spot networks, and as you may tell from the title I'm a bit confused. From my understanding based on the their difference Access Point is the best solution for me since it has the least amount of speed penalty for the devices that connect to it.

The Problem:

I have a Netgear WNDR3800 router in my leaving room. I have a desktop computer running Windows 7 in my bedroom connected via Ethernet cable to that router. I have poor wifi signal in my bedroom and I would like to boost it with the least amount of speed penalty since I like to stream media from my desktop to my wirelessly connected laptop over the network. In order to boost the signal I can buy an Access Point and place it in the bedroom. However, I have only one wire going from the router to the bedroom and if I connect it to the Access Point then my desktop will loose the wired connection.

Instead of buying an Access Point, is it possible to buy a desktop wifi adapter and have it serve as an Access Point to boost my wifi signal?

I know you can bridge the ethernet connection with the wifi adapter to create a new network? is it the same? Also, you can do ICS in windows?

HerpDerp
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4 Answers4

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I've used it for a long time with on Windows 7. See the top answer in this post: Internet connection sharing over WIFI without modifying LAN adapter IP address

I've created two batch files, one for setting up the wifi, and one for teardown. The first one:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=<YourSSID> key=<YourPassword> keyUsage=temporary
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

The second one:

netsh wlan stop hostednetwork

I just run the batch files as admin - and everything works.

P.S. On Windows 8 however I have a little trouble with this.

Edit: You should enable internet connection sharing in your Ethernet connection, to be used by the new virtual connection (your wifi).

Community
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hannanaha
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1

Don't do that. Just buy a cheap wireless router and use that as an access point. They have built-in switches, so you can add wired ports as well.

Don't use the Internet/WAN port, since this device will only be used on your LAN. Make sure to disable the DHCP server, as you don't want to two DHCP servers on the same LAN.

David Schwartz
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0

Buy a repeater and that will solve the issue. There are many different models and they support both 2.4 and 5GHz depending on model.

Many have several ethernet ports as well

Dave M
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Instead of making your PC a wifi AP, try setting up an ad-hoc network and sharing it. Setting up an ad-hoc wifi network is under "Network and Sharing Center" (or just open the start menu and type "ad-hoc"). Then turn on internet connection sharing for your main ethernet port through you wifi adapter. Detailed instructions here http://lifehacker.com/5369381/turn-your-windows-7-pc-into-a-wireless-hotspot

sep332
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