How to Setup a Wi-Fi HotSpot in Windows 8

Have you ever wanted to share your wired-only connection and turn it into a Wi-Fi hotspot? How about turn your wireless EVDO, 3G, or 4G wireless Internet connection into a Wi-Fi hotspot? Well, with Windows 8 you can! Actually, Windows 7 supports this too, though huawei 4g modem not many people know about it. You can follow my how-to tutorial below for Windows 8 and it will work for Windows 7 as well.

It's a good thing I can share my 4G connection, since Hurricane Sandy took out 5 trees in my yard, ripped the power line AND the phone line (my DSL Internet) from the pole leaving me with just Verizon 4G (via a 4G USB stick) for access to the Internet. Before we get to the step-by-step Windows 8 mobile broadband to Wi-Fi hotspot tutorial, here's some pictures of Hurricane Sandy's aftermath in my yard - starting first with me standing under a tree in my driveway:

Sure my 4G Verizon USB stick gives my laptop Internet, but after lending my laptop to my wife for the umpteenth time so she could check Facebook and her Labs4Rescue dog adoption site 3g usb modem she volunteers for, it was time to find a way to share my mobile broadband Verizon 4G connection!

I should mention Verizon sells their 4G MiFi hotspot device which allows you to share up to only 5 devices. The tutorial I explained above lets me use a standard 4G mobile broadband USB stick and share it with virtually unlimited users. Though you should be aware of any bandwidth overage charges of course. Enjoy!

Wifi in my car proof of concept

Some drivers love fancy chrome wheel rims, some add a huge wing spoiler on their car, or fuzzy dice hanging from their rear-view mirror. Me, when I bought my new car, I decided that I wanted a Wifi network in my car. So that any passenger with a laptop/iPod could read his email. And I imagined driving to distant holiday locations while my passenger where watching movies streamed from a NAS disk built into the car.

The important details here are:

The Huawei stick is compatible with the TP-Link router.
The Huawei stick can be huawei wireless router configured with ‘Save my PIN’, so that when it starts up, it connects to the 3G network without any manual intervention.
The TP-Link router runs on 12V DC (which is what a car has)

For the rest, the exercise was quite straight-forward: I configured the Huawei stick on my laptop with the right PIN code, popped it in myTP-Link router, configured the right 3G settings for Telenet (see here). Then I took an old 12V power transformer, chopped off the connector and linked it up to an old car cigarette lighter type of plug (sometimes it’s good to have an archive of obsolete cables and power supplies). I then hid the router under the base plate of my trunk, where there is also huawei 3g hotspot wifi router the battery (the BMW X1 stores the battery in the back, where you would normally have the spare tyre). I switch on the car and 20 seconds later, I have a Wifi network “OnTheRoadAgain” that is connected to the Internet. Proof of concept is OK!

The next step now is to add a (Synology) NAS, which also runs on 12V, and hook up my iPad to the car Wifi to view my collection of backed-up DVDs from that disk. And maybe run some extra programs (e.g. MRTG for monitoring) on that NAS. To be continued!