Such thing as a "reverse wifi card"?

The VCR King

The VCR King

Well-Known Member
Let's say I have an Ethernet cable plugged into my PC. Can I put some sort of card into my PC with antennas on it and then use my actual PC as a wifi router? Does such a thing exist?

Or could I add another Ethernet card then bridge it?
 
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This is known as a router. They're pretty cool devices actually. You should Google them to learn more. I hear they even let you get a completely WIRELESS internet signal on other devices. Crazy technology we have these days.
 
Why do you want to setup something that ridiculously weird? What are you trying to accomplish?


I need to know your thought process on this one. lol
 
This really isn't that weird of a question. Not that it's as common anymore, but in areas where you only have ethernet or if you need to pay for internet per device, using a hard wired laptop and sharing the internet via it's wireless card is a way to bypass this, and allows you to use devices that don't have ethernet ports.
 
There's a Linux daemon called hostapd that you can use to broadcast beacons like a wireless AP would.

Integrated functionality would limit you to an ad-hoc network though.
 
Are you wanting to connect the Modem to your PC via the Ethernet cable to your rear I/O panel and have your PC act as a router via a wireless pcie card?
 
Guys, here is my whole idea:

Internet connection --> ethernet cable --> PC ---> Windows Network bridge ---> wifi router card ---> create a WAN
 
I'm still not sure why you would want to do that though? I mean... your idea would mean that to have internet access 24/7, your desktop must be turned on at all times.

I mean... the only reason I can think of why you'll want to do this is if you already have said wifi adapter on your PC but do not want to buy a router.

It just seems like such a hassle that can be avoided with router and there's a lot of good routers for the cheap.
 
Intel_man said:
I need to know your thought process on this one. lol
Click to expand...

Careful, you'll hurt yourself.

I understand the interest in doing something like this but you seem to be excellent at finding a variety of ways to spend money on things you don't need, meanwhile you say you have a bunch of problems with your computer and want to save and buy a new one. Don't you think that introducing something like this to your system is just asking for more problems and putting you financially farther away from a new machine altogether? I get the interest and what not, tinkering with weird setups can be a lot of fun, but you don't seem to be in much of a position to do that from what I've gathered in your other threads and posts.
 
If you want a simple test proof of concept, set up an ad-hoc network on your wireless card and use Internet Connection Sharing between those two interfaces. You should be able to join your phone or something to the ad-hoc SSID and ICS will give you NAT/DHCP.

I wouldn't use that as a daily driver though.
 
This isn't best practice in your case for many reasons, one is your PC would not be protected by NAT and would be wide open from the outside, so you'd have to lock down your PC. A PC uses a lot more electricity than a router does if you leave it on 24/7. The range of a computer wireless card is generally not as good as a dedicated wireless router/AP, and it's a lot more work to configure.
 
You can definitely do this in Linux with hostap, and some cards (I've been very lucky with Atheros chips) can even be set up in infrastructure mode (i.e. not ad-hoc, just like a proper router). I've done this myself in a few instances, and it works well enough (although your transfer speeds will suffer).

Internet connection sharing with an ad-hoc network definitely sounds like the easiest solution in your situation, I'll second that. Ad hoc networks may not be supported by phones/tables though.
 
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