Configuring The Host Computer

Now you will need to configure the host computer, i.e. the computer that has the broadband Internet connection. If you are sharing your Internet connection using a regular broadband router (i.e. without wireless capability) any computer connected to the router can be configured as host. As we already mentioned, you cannot turn off this computer or all other computer will lose access to the Internet.

Just follow the step-by-step instructions below.

1. Go to Start, Control Panel, Network Connections. Right click the wireless connection (it should be called “Wireless Network Connection”) and select properties.

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Figure 4: Selecting the wireless connection properties.

2. On the window that will show up, click on the Wireless Networks tab, see Figure 5. Make sure that no wireless networks are being listed under Preferred Networks. If you see networks there, remove them one by one.

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Figure 5: Wireless network configuration.

3. Click on Advanced button and the window shown on Figure 6 will appear. Select “Computer-to-computer (ad-hoc) networks only” and click on Close.

Figure 6: Configuring our network as “ad-hoc”

4. The window shown on Figure 5 will show up again. Now click on Add and the window shown on Figure 7 will appear. It is thru this window that we will create our wireless network. You will need to fill out the following:

• Network Name (SSID): This will be the name of your network. This is how your computers will call your network. In our case, we called our network “MyHome”.
• Network Authentication: Open.
• Data encryption: WEP.
• Uncheck the “The key is provided for me automatically” box.
• Configure your network key. This is a password that will be used to encrypt data transferred on your network, preventing neighbors from surfing the web for free and also preventing people to view or even delete your files, if file sharing is enabled on your network. You must fill this field. The key must have five alphanumerical characters. 

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Figure 7: Creating our own wireless network.

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