How to transform a laptop into a WiFi Hotspot and share the internet connection with other devices

Many of us who are android users are familiar with the concept of sharing Internet connection through a WiFi hotspot. Android phones provide us with the opportunity to transform our mobile handsets into a wifi hotspot and thereby share the Internet connection on our phones on other devices such as our laptops. In this post however, we will be focusing on doing the reverse. That is, making our laptops or computers to serve as the hotspot and share the Ethernet or the WiFi connection we are using on our computer with other
devices within range. Does it occur to you like its almost impossible? Well it is not. Prior to this, we had other method of sharing the Internet connection on the laptop with android phones by use of USB Tethering functionality and also using Connectify. Well, many people have a problem with doing this successfully and its also limited to android phones and that you have to connect physically with a USB cable. I tried using connectify but it did not work for me.Enough said, lets get to business. When it dawned to me that there could be a possibility of making my laptop a WiFi hotspot, i went into a thorough research and i found two softwares that will best serve this functionality.  The two softwares work almost the same but with a slight difference. In simple terms, its like having your own free wifi.

Softwares to use in turning your computer into a WiFi hotspot and sharing the Internet connection with other computers and mobile phones

1. My Public WiFi; I personally tried this software and it worked for me. All it does is that it turns your computer into an Internet hotspot and thereby enabling the sharing of the connection. Apart from that, it also gives you the opportunity to track the URLs that devices connected to your network surf through. Download Public WiFi from this LINK
2. Virtual Router; This is the second software i found that serves the same function as the one above. The only noticeable difference is that this one does not give the use the ability to track URLs surfed by devices connected to the network. I have to admit, this was my favourite. Download Virtual Router from this LINK

 

How to configure;

Well, to get the two softwares up and running is really easy, both of them work almost in the same way and hence configuring them is 99% similar. Follow the steps below and transform your PC into a WiFi Hotspot.

1. When the download is done, install the software
2. Open the software
3. Under the ‘Network SSD/ Network name, insert the name of your choice.
4. Set the password; it should be at least eight characters
5. In the drop down menu below, select the connection you are trying to share and then click on ‘Start Virtual Router’