Friday, February 27, 2015

Make your Windows PC into WiFi hotspot with open source Virtual Router

Have you been to a place (such as hotel room, meeting room, training room, etc.) where no WiFi service is available, and instead LAN connection is available for Internet access, and you need to connect a number of your gadgets (such as handphone, tablet, etc.) to the Internet?

With the Virtual WiFi and Wireless Hosted Network features introduced in MS Windows 7 (also available in its successor Windows 8 as well), you are able to make your laptop or PC with wireless network card into a WiFi hotspot to share its Internet access with other WiFi connected devices (computer, handphone, tablet, printer, camera, etc.)

Virtual Router by Chris Pietschmann is a small Windows application that make use of this Virtual WiFi and Wireless Hosted Network features in Windows 7 and above, to provide a very simple and fool proof way for you to make your laptop (or PC with wireless network card) to be the WiFi hotspot. It is open source and free for download and use under Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).

With Virtual Router, you can wirelessly share any Internet connection (WiFi, LAN, Cable Modem, Dial-up, Cellular, etc.) of your computer with any WiFi device (Laptop, Smart Phone, iPod Touch, iPhone, Android Phone, Zune, Netbook, wireless printer, etc.) These devices connect to Virtual Router just like any other WiFi access point, and the connection is secured using WPA2 encryption.

This small application is so easy to use that, you just need to define your desired SSID and password, and select the network interface to share the Internet access, then click the Start Virtual Router button.


Connected devices will be shown in the Peers Connected panel.

The device will be connected with WPA2 data encryption, and get a DHCP assigned IP address.


Click here to go to the download webpage of Virtual Router.

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