How can I make my computer a wireless hotspot so that another device can connect to "me"?
1 Answer
Well I haven't tried this in server 2012 but this ability has been in there since windows xp, they changed the process to set it up in vista and I believe 7 does it the same way, also I think it will work on windows server as well. there's also a few ways to go about this, depending on what how you want to set this hotspot up and what you have.
The First method, requires the computer to have two network cards and at least one of them to be a wireless card. The first one is used to connect the computer to the internet, the second one is to set up a "ad-hoc" wireless network. then once you do that, you enable Internet Connection Sharing using the first card as your source. Since it's a server you also have access to "Routing and Remote Access" feature. you may have to use this instead of ICS on the servers. The Advantages of this Route would be that the hardware is cheep, and if the computer is otherwise portable while online, it can remain as such while doing this. Disadvantages is it's more complicated to setup and Ad Hoc networks are limited to WEP encryption and no mac filtering, also there are a few devices that can't connect to ad hoc networks.
your second option would be to use a wireless access point instead of a wireless card,for that you'd still need two network cards in your computer (one to go to the internet the other to go to the AP) and then set up either ICS or RRA between the two cards. Advantages here is that you got much more options on the wireless setup as the ap can support WPA2 and Mac Filtering, and it will show up as a regular wireless network to the other devices so no compatibility issues. disadvantages are: if something happens to the ap the server may not be able to tell if there's a problem automatically like it could with the wi-fi card, also the AP will require an external power source, and they are usually around the same size as a home router so not all that portable.
one obvious disadvantage of either option as opposed to using a separate wireless router is if the computer has to shut down or locks up for any reason internet access will be cut off.
Microsoft's Gude to Setup a Ad-hoc network in visa and 7 and Microsoft's Gude to Setup Internet Connection Sharing or Microsoft Technet: Routing and Remote Access