Gnubox has been here for a long time and, for those of you who were adventurous and persistent enough to go through the everlasting setting process, it worked. I wasn’t and I was never able to connect my mobile device to my computer’s connection. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t trying my best either, because I was stuck with a Nokia 3250 and I didn’t want to overload the poor thing. But the question had been spinning like a rat on wheels in my head, especially when I got the trial devices: N95 8GB, N81 8GB and N810. All of them had WiFi connectivity and I was dying to find out a way to use my laptop as a router for the LAN connection that I had at home into a WLAN connection. I even googled it, in vain.
Fast Forward to today. I was going through a long list of unread but starred RSS items when I stumbled upon this post about UPnP from The Symbian Blog. I was sighing once again, thinking this was another feature I will never use, when I read this “You will need to setup a home network first (or an ad-hoc network if you don’t have a router). The detailed how to on setting up and ad-hoc network can be found here for Windows Xp and here for Vista.” No need to say, I was in heaven!
Long story short, the tutorial worked partially as I was able to see the connection I set from my N95, was able to connect but everytime I would open a web page, it would give me a “No Gateway Reply”. Good’ol friend Google to the rescue again, and with some serious persistence, I was able to make it work. Good thing, the set-up was faster than the method Vaibhav had demonstrated, and bonus thing the resulting network was secure, meaning my neighbors can’t get advantage of my new WiFi. Here is the step-by-step tutorial.
What is this Ad-Hoc thing, and why do I need it?
If you have a wired internet connection at home or in the work place, like a DSL or ADSL or the old dial-up connection, without a wireless router, and you are dying to have this connection converted somehow to a wireless connection that you can use on your WiFi enabled device, than this is your solution. It will take your wired connection on the computer and transform it to a wireless connection, that will then be used by your device to connect to the web.
What do I need?
In order to perform this, you will need a computer with Windows XP or Vista on (I will only detail the XP side, as this is what I am using now, for Vista you can check the link above). This PC needs to be WiFi enabled, meaning most new laptops will work. If it doesn’t you can always get a wireless USB dongle, though getting a router by itself might be a smarter solution. You also need a device with support for WLAN, or WiFi if you want, this includes the N95 series, the N82, N91 and N93, N81 and many Eseries.
You also need 1 to 5 minutes of free time to make it work, depends on how fast you are with your computer.
I’m sold, show me how!
First thing you need to do is get connected to your usual connection on your computer.
Second thing is enabling Internet Connection Sharing (or ICS), and this is how you do it:
- From the Windows XP desktop, click Start, Control Panel, Network and Internet Connections, and Network Connections.
- Right-click the wired network connection (this is your current connection that is used to access the Internet, the wired one), and then click Properties.
- On the Advanced tab, select the Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection check box and clear the Allow other network users to control or disable this shared Internet connection check box.
- Click OK to save changes to your connection.
Third thing is to create the protected wireless network shared through the ICS:
- From the click Start, Control Panel, Network and Internet Connections, and Network Connections.
- Right-click the wireless network connection (this is your still disabled WiFi connection), and then click Properties.
- Click the Wireless Networks tab.
- In the wireless network adapter properties dialog box, click Add under Preferred networks.
- On the Association tab, type the name of your ad hoc wireless network in Network name (SSID). This is the name of the network you want to set, for example, I named mine Dotsisx as this is my nickname.
- Select the This is a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network check box and clear the The key is provided for me automatically check box.
- In Network Authentication, select Open. In Data encryption, select WEP.
- In Network key, type the WEP key. The WEP key is a password that you are setting so that no one would access this network and make use of your bandwidth or data volumes. It should be a random sequence of hexadecimal digits or numbers, letters, and punctuation. Make sure you use something that you will remember easily, but that no other people in your surrounding might know ;)
- In Confirm network key, retype the WEP key.
- Click OK to save changes to the wireless network and OK to save changes to the wireless network adapter.
This is about it! Now all you need to do is pick up your device and click on WLAN Scanning on your Standby Screen. You will see a “WLAN Networks Found” line, click it and select “Start Web Browsing”. Amongst the found networks, you will find the one you just created, ie the one I decided to name Dotsisx. Click on it, it will ask you to enter the WEP key. This is the password you have chosen for you network. If everything is right, you will find yourself web browsing within minutes.
I have found this method to be nothing short of amazing. The range is good, even behind a wall or two, and I can use 2 devices (other than my computer) at the same time. The speed is also really reliable, and don’t forget that it’s a protected network so getting inside it will be a bit difficult if your neighbors are not techies. Mine are as far from it as possible, so I have no problems.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to continue exploring the Internet Radio application that never worked on my university’s WiFi network but is now blossoming.
