NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, April 2012
Create a Free WiFi Hotspot with your PC
By Ira Wilsker, Radio Show Host,
Columnist, College Professor and deputy sheriff
iwilsker@sbcglobal.net
(click to email author)

WEBSITES:
http://www.mhotspot.com
http://www.mhotspot.com/howto.html
http://www.thedailybuggle.com/wifi-hotspot-free-windows-pc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ABC5QmTjs (Video about Mhotspot)

I was recently doing one of my cyber security presentations at a professional meeting in a posh Dallas area hotel, and there was a need for several users to get online for research purposes. As the speaker, I had a hard-wired Ethernet connection allowing me to access the internet, but the available WiFi connections in the room were weak and slow, making it difficult for the others to connect to the internet. This was one of those situations where a common and inexpensive WiFi router connected to the available Ethernet cable would have sufficed, but no one had a WiFi router with them, as that is something that we typically do not carry in our computer bags. I remembered a column about a year ago in the Daily Buggle (thedailybuggle.com/wifi-hotspot-free-windows-pc) which explained how to use a modern WiFi capable Windows PC as a WiFi hotspot, without the use of any additional hardware. I searched for that article, found it, and in a matter of minutes, we were all connected to the internet using our laptops, netbooks, and smart phones.

Most recent versions of Windows include a little known feature called internet connection sharing (ICS), which is especially easy to set up and configure as an ad-hoc wireless network on Windows 7. When used with a freeware utility, Mhotspot (mhotspot.com), the internet connected laptop computer becomes a virtual WiFi router with no additional hardware, and no complicated software configuration. Once installed on the computer, the Mhotspot software does all of the work, and creates a WiFi hotspot without the use of complex configuration; Mhotspot is so simple that a single mouse click creates the hotspot.

The newly released version 4 of Mhotspot was released in February 2012, and is a fast 210 kb download, even though the website still shows it as version 3 (Click here to return to top



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