Turn Our Windows 8 Laptop Into a Wireless Access Point

Introduction

In this article we are going to explain how to turn our Windows 8 laptop into a wireless access point. After Windows 7 Microsoft built virtual WiFi technology into Windows.

Some steps for creating our own WiFi hotspot

Step 1

In the Windows 8 Desktop, first we press the "Win + R" key. The Run window opens. Then type "ncpa.cpl" into the Run box and click "OK".

 

Step 2

Right-click on our wireless network adapter. When our network connection is opened click on "Properties" from the context menu.

 

Step 3

Now switch over to the Sharing tab and allow other devices to use our machine's internet by selecting the first checkbox and then unchecking the second before clicking on the "OK" button.

 

Step 4

Right-click in the bottom left of our screen, to launch an administrative command prompt.

 

Step 5

The first thing we need to do is set up the wireless network, this is done using the netsh command like so"

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid="csharpcorner" key="Pa$$w0rd"

Where ssid is the name of our network and key is the password we want users to connect with, its also worth mentioning that the access point is created with WPA2-PSK (AES) encryption.

 

Step 6

Now we are ready to start broadcasting our network- netsh wlan start hostednetwork

 

Step 7

The last command we will need to know is the show command, it will tell you things like the channel we are on as well as the number of clients connected to our network:

netsh wlan show hostednetwork