Almost all of the Laptops are coming with Wi-Fi adapter inbuilt. Using that, you can easily access internet when you are in Wi-Fi hotspot. It’s not only about accessing internet, you can transfer files and various other communications through Wi-Fi. Sometimes you may be using wireless broadband with USB dongle. In that case can’t other devices connect to your laptop through Wi-Fi and share internet.
Unfortunately Wi-Fi doesn’t work that way. It requires Wi-Fi access point to connect two compatible devices. Your next question, “Can’t I turn my laptop in to Wi-Fi access point?”. Yes! You can since hardware in Wi-Fi access point is pretty much similar to one in your laptop. But you will need special software running on your Laptop. This is where Connectify comes to the picture.
Connectify is piece of software which can convert your laptop in to Wi-Fi access point or a hotspot. Then you can connect any other Wi-Fi devices in to your laptop, share internet, transfer files or run any other Wi-Fi application.
How to Setup Connectify?
- Download and Install Connectify
- After installation wizard will ask you to reboot the computer. Proceed with that.
- Once reboot completed it will show you a windows with steps that you have to do to configure Connectify.
- It will ask you to add Connectify to windows firewall as exclusion. If you have any other firewall installed you will have to do the same there.
- There will be an icon placed on system tray. Click on that.
- It will open a panel where you can enter hotspot name and password.
- Then you can select the source of internet if you need to share it.
- Finally click start hotspot.
- It will take some time and it will notify you once it started working as a Hotspot.
- Now Connectify Wi-Fi hotspot is activated. Any other Wi-Fi device can now connect to your laptop through Connectify.
- All you have to do is go Wi-Fi settings in device you want to connect to your laptop, search for Wi-Fi networks, locate Connectify hotspot by given name, enter password and connect.
- If you share your internet connection it also will be shared among connected devices.
Wrapping Up
This is a perfect solution for you to setup personal area network with couple of Wi-Fi enabled laptops without having Wi-Fi router. All you have to do is install and setup Connectify in one Laptop and it will act as the access point for all the other laptops. Same way you can share internet as well. In that case you have to plug a Broadband dongle to the Laptop which is acting as Wi-Fi access point. It’s simple as that.
Recently I introduced an android application which let you to control your computer through your Smartphone. It uses Wi-Fi and in the case you are not using Wi-Fi router, you can use Connectify to let the Unified Remote to connect to computer.
Quick Catch-up
- Unified Remote – Control Your PC with Android Smartphone
Connectify is a commercial software application, so you can use only the Lite version for free. If you need advanced features such as Drag and drop file transfer, repeater functionality and premium support you must purchase the PRO version. Hats off for the development team for adding most of the important features to Lite version.
There could be lots of creative applications of Connectify. Try this piece of software and share your experience with NOG community.
Tags: #Notebook #Wi-Fi