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The Situation

When im staying at my girlfriends we both like to have internet access on our laptops but her accommodation don't allow wireless routers.

My Question

My question is if I set up an Ad-Hoc network to share the internet connection as shown here on How To Geek. Will my laptop be acting as a wireless router or will the connection all go through my laptop as one ip address so it appears to be my computer accessing the webpages etc, that my girlfriend actually is.

  • i would be interested in knowing any additional information that could help sove this problem eg. if connectify would do what i want.
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An important question might be why do they not allow wireless routers? Is it just routers in general, or the wireless bit that's a problem? Though I doubt you'd live in an "RF Quiet Zone" and not know it, this may be something to consider. –  Iszi Apr 11 '12 at 20:39
I imagine its routers in general, and I can only assume its to do with there being a limit of one IP per apartment tenant, or perhaps its so people aren't idiots and give away the internet free to anyone in range, I don't know. People have been fined for it before so I don't want my girlfriend to get fined...I did it anyway, works fine. I told her if they start asking questions to just say she connected her phone to her laptop via WiFi so she could use the internet on it...seems like it would be reasonable enough...also promised I would pay any fine that might come her way. –  Jacxel Apr 12 '12 at 8:17
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2 Answers

Setting up a computer to provide internet access to another computer via Internet Connection Sharing will work off multiple IP addresses.

Hmm... Ok. Internet Connection -> First Computer. That computer gets an IP address from the Internet Connection device and sees the Internet Connection as a Gateway. Now... if you set up ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) to share that internet connection across a second network card (Wireless or wired, doesn't matter) ICS will want to work on a different internal IP range, and set up that first computer as ANOTHER gateway.

I'll put it another way. Let's say her laptop is connected via ethernet cable to the internet connection in her apartment. Her laptop gets an IP address of You set up her laptop to share that internet connection across her wireless card. This will require also enabling ICS. ICS will assign the IP address of to the Wireless Card, and make it a Gateway. If you connect your laptop to this new Ad-Hoc network, you will get an IP address on that new range ( maybe) and your computer will now be seeing as your internet gateway.

Some details? The computer that is going to be in the middle has to have two network cards (two wireless, one wireless one wired, two wired) where one is connected to the Internet Source, and the other connects to the other computer.

The computer in the middle will not act as an Access Point, just passing out IP addresses in the existing range that is offered by the internet source. It will indeed act like a router, starting a new IP range.

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As an alternative, this answer applies to your situation alone and is technically against the rules but worthy of a mention.

If they don't see the network then it's unlikely they will be able to do much about it. You can just disable the router broadcasting it's SSID (Network name). This will make the routers WiFi invisible to those who don't already know it exists (or running Kismet but I won't go into that). Connecting to it just requires entering in the SSID into your laptop upon initial connect. It should be able to find it afterwards.

This is of course the more sneaky approach to your problem.

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