UPDATE 2/21/16: Easier way to share wireless hotel Internet connection
UPDATE 11/24/13: |
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Connect to a hotel WiFi and set up your own private WiFi hotspot using an ordinary wireless router!
After a couple recent business trips, I found that I really wanted to connect my laptop, iPod Touch and phone to the hotel WiFi. However, since the hotel charges for each unique MAC address, I ‘d have to pay for multiple connections. I scoured the Internet looking for some type of wireless sharing device to solve my problem. Surely one existed. It would be dead simple if I wanted to share a wired Ethernet jack (everyday router/NAT, right?). However, I could find no out-of-the-box solution to share a wireless connection. Initially, I did it the hard way using an Apple AirPort Express wired to my laptop (see below for my original post). I could get it to work most the time, but it was a real pain to change configurations. After a little more digging, I found a much more elegant and easy solution.
Do I Need to Repeat Myself?
A few years ago, I hacked a Linksys router with the DD-WRT opensource firmware which allowed me to use it as a network bridge, giving wireless capabilities to my Ethernet-only network devices . I hadn’t paid much attention to that community since then, but my new needs made me check up on what they were doing. Well, it looks like that whole movement has grown incredibly. The best part was that they have moved on from just network bridging to the type of network repeating I needed; one that creates a secondary network! Another surprising thing is that Linksys, as well as other manufacturers, now openly embrace the use of opensource firmware. How times have changed.
Different Flavors of Repeaters
Let me explain why this particular type of repeating is necesssary. When you connect a basic router to, say, your cable or DSL modem, you are adding just the router to your ISP’s network. The devices “behind” the router in your home are on your local area network (LAN) only. The router manages all of the network traffic between devices as well as to and from your ISP’s network. From your ISP’s perspective, the router looks like a single client device.
A wireless network repeater is a device used to expand the range of a wireless LAN. A few home routers offer this as an optional mode. Technically, these are repeater bridges since they create a secondary network segment and connect (i.e., bridge) it to the primary segment. The important part is that both the primary and secondary network segments are on the same LAN.
You might add a repeater bridge upstairs when your wireless router (connected to your cable modem) was downstairs. Devices connecting to the upstairs repeater will operate as if they were connected to the downstairs router. Why would you do this? Well, it may be problematic trying to connect upstairs devices directly to the downstairs router due to a weak signal. Connecting upstairs devices to the upstairs repeater may be more dependable.
The flavor of repeater that I need, however, is one where the repeater creates a secondary segment, but creates one that is its own separate LAN. To do this, it must also do DHCP and NAT. Like an ISP that can only see the primary router, from the primary router’s perspective, it only sees the repeater, even though behind the repeater there may be many other devices. The opensource DD-WRT firmware allows me to turn a cheap Linksys router into such a repeater.
One thing you might take away from the illustration is how dangerous it is to connect directly to a hotel WiFi. It is wide open to attacks from other computers connected at the hotel.
The Easy Way
After reading up what I needed, I bought an Linksys WRT54GL wireless router for $60 at Frys, installed the latest DD-RT firmware, and followed a dead simple on-line tutorial. I had the router sharing a wireless connection in about 20 minutes. (Beats the pants off the days of torture I endured doing it the hard way.) Sure, it’s an old-school bulky blue Linksys router with an AC adapter and not as sleek as the Apple AirPort, but it’s rock solid and works like a charm. To flash the firmware, I used the “Mini-Build required for inital flashing via WEB, v24 preSP2 (Build13064)” file and just used the router’s web interface firmware upgrade function. Easy as pie.
When updating the DD-WRT settings, it may help to understand that the Physical Interface is the part that connects the router to the wireless access point (i.e., the actual Internet connection). As such, you have to manually enter the SSID and passphrase, if any, so the router can make the connection. You’ll need to change these two settings, if you later need to connect to a different access point. However, there is a little optional step that will make the router a universal wireless repeater. (I’m referring to the nvram set wl_ssid=”” start up script step.) This will only work for unsecured connections, like most hotels, but I’m wondering how it works if there are multiple access points in range. FYI I didn’t add the script.
In addition to the Physical Interface, you need to set up the Virtual Interface. This is the access point you are creating that you will connect your laptop and other devices to. What’s the difference? Well, the router only has one radio. As such, it is impossible for it to be truly communicating with the Internet access point (i.e., acting as a client) while simultaneously broadcasting to remote connections (i.e., acting as a host). The cleaver programmers quickly alternate between the two tasks, so from the user’s perspective, it appears as if it’s doing things simultaneously. Genius!
Anyways, this was easy to do and seems to work well. Below is the original entry I was going to post before I found the easy way. It may help you understand what the WRT54GL is doing; however, it remains mostly because I spent too damn long writing and editing it to just trash it =).
UPDATE 4/6/10:
After my success with the Linksys WRT54GL, I switched to a Buffalo WHR-HR-G54. The Buffalo takes up about one-half the space and only has a single external antenna. In fact, it has an internal one and seems to work fine only using that if I’m in close proximity. Also, Buffalo is suppose to start shipping routers with DD-WRT pre-installed!
UPDATE 4/15/10:
On my first trip with the new repeater and it works flawlessly! A side benefit is that all my devices automatically connected to it since they already had the connection settings saved. Also, even though this particular hotel does not secure their WiFi (i.e., I could connect all my devices for free even without the repeater), I’m still using the repeater since it provides some level of protection between my stuff and the hotel’s WiFi network. Speed hasn’t been an issue.
UPDATE 6/17/10:
I feel compelled to state the obvious that this set up will not protect you from the normal hazards of connecting to a public WiFi hotspot. The normal suggestions to use HTTPS and VPN still apply.
UPDATE 11/15/13:
This post continues to get tons of hits after 3-1/2 years! Anyways, many routers have the bridge feature built-in and you don’t really need DD-WRT anymore, at least from what I’ve read. The TP-LINK TL-WR702N looks really good and it’s so tiny. I actually ordered the 703N version from China (via eBay) which already has DD-WRT installed. It was only $26! I’ll post something when I get it to test.
UPDATE 12/7/14:
The instructions miss an important step: After you set the Physical Interface settings and save, go to Status > Wireless and click Site Survey at the bottom. Look for the desired network in the list that appears and click the Join button on the right. Note that hovering over the entry in the Open column will tell you what type of password security is being used so you can use that in the following step.
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The Hard Way
I found a lot of nuggets of information on the Internet, but no one place that really let me get my arms around the solution. Hopefully, I’ll succeed where others have failed :-) There are basically just two things you need to do: 1) Hook up a wired network bridge to your laptop that wirelessly connects to the hotel WiFi access point; and, 2) Put your laptop in ad hoc mode. After that, you can easily connect any wireless device, like an iPod Touch, to your laptop, which now acts as an access point. (See illustration)
First, you need to get a network bridge. What is a bridge? It’s just a device that connects one network to another and manages the connection. In our case, it is bridging a wireless network (e.g., the hotel’s WiFi) to a wired network (your laptop only). You can find dedicated bridges, but they are expensive and not very portable. The best thing to get is a WiFi router that has a “bridge” mode. (Sometimes it’s called a client mode or not even called anything specifically!) I found three portable devices that looked like they had a bridge mode: The D-Link DWL-G730AP, the ASUS WL330GE, and the Apple AirPort Express.
On a side note, Linksys once offered the WTR54GS Wireless G Travel Router. From what I could gather, this is exactly what I was looking for, but sadly it appears to have been long out of production with no apparent replacement from Linksys or a competitor. The key listed feature is “shares a wired or wireless internet connection”. Other than the WTR54GS, I could not find a single portable device that would share a wireless connection out of the box. The ASUS WL330GE does have a repeater mode, but from what I can tell, it will only extent coverage and doesn’t have the capability of simultaneously creating it’s own independent network.
I opted for the AirPort because of it’s nice compact design that doesn’t require a bulky AC adapter. The D-Link and ASUS units looked kinda outdated too. The AirPort supports 802.11n. I gotta say, though, as nice as the AirPort looks outside, the software interface is ugly as hell and cumbersome. Every other router I’ve ever seen uses a nice web interface except this one. Basically you set the settings in a PC utility and it transfers a settings file to the device.
(NOTE: The following instructions are for a PC running Vista, but you should be able to do the same things on other operating systems.)
A couple things to take care of first:
- Connect your computer to the AirPort with an Ethernet cable.
- You must be in range of the wireless network.
OK, let’s configure your AirPort to work in bridge mode.
- Run the AirPort Utility.
- After your device is recognized, click the Continue button. (Note that it can take its sweet time to recognize your device.)
- Give the device a name and enter a password. This password is just used if you want to change the settings later. Click Continue.
- Choose “I want AirPort Express to join my current network” and click Continue.
- Choose “I want AirPort Express to wirelessly join my current network” and click Continue.
- Finally, select the wireless network you want to access, enter the login info, and click Continue.
- Click Update on the next page and your settings should be transferred to the device.
- If it all works out, you will get a Congratulations screen and the green light should be lit on the AirPort Express unit.
- Unplug the AirPort Express Ethernet cable. Wait a few seconds and re-plug it in.
- As you use the AirPort with different access points, you will need to change the wireless network login settings. You can do this by clicking the Manual Setup button and changing the settings on the Wireless tab.
Now, even though the AirPort successfully connects, if you are setting this up at home, your laptop may still be using your normal direct connection to your wireless network. As such, you need to disconnect from any wireless connections (or just temporarily turn off your laptop’s wireless radio). You may also need to set any existing wireless connections so that they don’t reconnect automatically. You need to test if you can connect to the Internet via just the AirPort connection. Open up a browser and try accessing a website. Essentially, your laptop should think it’s connected via a wired Ethernet connection.
The above is probably the trickiest part to getting this whole thing to work. If you don’t really understand networking, it will be difficult to troubleshoot and way beyond this short tutorial. However, it is pretty straightforward and should work.
Next, enable Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on your laptop:
- In Vista, open the Control Panel and click the Network and Sharing Center icon.
- Click on Manage Network Connection link on the left side.
- Right-click your Local Area Connection icon and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
- Click on the Sharing tab
- Enable the “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection” option. (If a drop-down menu is visible, set it to your wireless network connection.)
- Close the windows down.
Warning: When you enable ICS, I found that it changes the TCP/IP settings for the Wireless Network Connection to a static IP instead of DHCP. Moreover, ICS will not work through the wireless connection if it is set to DHCP. The ramification is that if you want to go back to directly connection to WiFi via DHCP (e.g., when you are at home). You have to manually change this setting.
Now, set up an Ad-hoc network connection on your laptop:
- On the Network and Sharing Center window, click Set up a connection or network.
- Choose “Set up a wireles ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network” and click Next and Next again.
- Give it a (SSID) name, like “adhoc”
- Try WPA2-Personal security and enter your network passphrase. For whatever reason, I’ve had better luck connecting with the less secure WEP.
- Enable the Save this network option and click Next.
- This should set it up and make it ready to use.
Now, just connect to the Ad-hoc network from your portable device, like it was an ordinary WiFi connection. Be patient! I have found that after you connect to the access point, it can take several seconds for Internet access to be available to the portable device.
In the future, you will likely need to re-connect to the Ad-hoc network on your laptop. Just open the Network and Sharing Center, click the Connect to a network link on the left side and choose the Adhoc connect you created.
Well, that’s it. You can now share a single hotel WiFi connection with multiple devices. I anxious to test this out on my next business trip.
A note on Windows Bridge Mode
I also tried formally bridging the Local Area Connection to the Wireless Network Connection within Windows. To do this, you just hold Ctrl and select both connections in the Network Connection window, right-click and choose Bridge Connections from the pop-up menu. Using this method, I could connect my portable devices, but I could not get my laptop to browse the Internet. ICS seems to be a form of bridging that works better.
Why do all that work when there are easier solutions available? Mobile routers that serve multiple purposes. Now if you take a wireless access point (your hotel/ship/airplane) WiFi and bridge a network the access point will only see one device regardless of how many you have running behind the bridge. One you take one device and authenticate your done.
Now some places are getting smart about it and reading packets or worse they are rebroadcasting in different channels with same ssid and password. Fine. Take the network and use a device like hootoo travel routers. Done
@victor: Well, if you look the original post was made 5 years ago. There was no off the shelf solution back then. That said, today, some people just like to use custom firmware and not something you can buy at Best Buy (tho there are some routers that actually come with DDWRT pre-installed :-) Also, just $20 can get you a pretty powerful router using DD WRT.
I know it’s been a while – I would like to know how to setup the information provided by the hotel into the router. I am a little lost on how to do this. Also,can you provide an updated link to the tutorial?
BTW, thank you for the tutorial above.
It’s been too long for me to remember and I don’t have the DD-WRT router handy. Seems like you just set the Physical Interface settings to the SSID and passphrase of the hotel WiFi.
Javier, I wrote an updated tutorial which can be found here http://seriouslytrivial.com/2013/11/23/sharing-wifi-with-multiple-devices/
Forgot the url http://www.connectify.me/ – I have no association BTW – just love their work…
To do this without a router use connectify – an excellent bit of software capable of easily sharing any Internet connection you have on your pc with any other devices you allow. The free version is great but the full version allows you to share a wifi connection over the pc’s wired Ethernet which can be very useful for legacy devices.
Well thats the problem previously I was using the above technique and that was going perfect but in this hotel this is the issue I know a way to connect the laptop with hotel internet and then share it through router connected to my laptop lan. But what if my wife need to use it at hotel and I am at office with my laptop. So there must be some way. Another solution with me is to connect my iphone4 with the hotel internet and make it a WIFI hotspot but again when I have to leave it will go with me.
ANy solution through the router connected to the hotel… and then my devices.
@Samy: So you have Wifi > laptop > router and that works. If that is right, you just need to follow my post and get a router that works in bridge mode. Problem solved.
@Samy: That shouldn’t be the case. Generally, the hotel uses the MAC address to identify the user thus only see your router. If your router is connected to the network, anything behind the router should be effectively invisible. Do you happen to have DMZ turned on or somehow turned off NAT on the router?
Hi,
Excellent post but here is the problem if any body could solve.
I have a one month hotel stay and want to connect 3 devices to the one internet. But problem is that once I connect to hotel wifi it direct me to the hotel page. And there it asks room number and last name upon providing that it take to the next page asking the package I want 1 hour or 24 hour…… etc.
But instead of WIFI I connected my router with the lan and my devices with my router, upon purchasing the package. It only allows me to work with one device if I connect other devices it again asks for room no and last name and then ask for the package selection on everynew device even connected to my router, So is there any solution.
Problem is no login password is provided and the next page is package selection for every new device though I am connecting through my router. So its really a trouble, if anybody could help.
Hi,
Thanks for the useful post.
If I explain my situation first it may be easier: I want to use the UMA function on my blackberry whilst abroad (so connect to a wireless network not mobile system and just counts as normal minutes) however I have read that it blocks you with an overseas IP. So my thought was to use something like an ASUS WL-330gE to connect my laptop to a public hot spot, connect to my UK VPN, share that internet connection through the wireless and connect BB to that (BB’s don’t connect to ad-havoc!)
It may seem as rather complicated but it does mean I can use my phone abroad, with all functions, at no extra cost.
Also if internet cafe was LAN would this apply?
Thank you in advance!
I don’t know how the BB detects an overseas IP since if you are connecting to an AP/router the IP address it gets is a local one (e.g., 192.168.1.XXX). I guess it could follow the packets. If so, it seems like the VPN would not circumvent that detection method. You’ll just have to try.
If indeed BB blocks overseas IP, my guess is that it won’t work.
spice3d- thanks, I guess I will just have to find out how well it traces the IP. But any advice on sharing a VPN connection, will it just be the internet shared if the laptop is connected to the VPN?
Dunno the answer to your VPN question. I depends on how it’s configured by the host and what is allowed.
Hi I just purchased a Linksys WRT54GL after reading your excellent article. I have noted all the screen shots for ‘Universal Wireless Repeater’ is there a similar dummies guide for sharing a wired (ethernet) hotel connection using the DD-WRT firmware?
Sharing a wired hotel connection is just like doing it at home with a cable or DSL modem. I can’t tell you the exact steps but it should be very easy and straight forward. Just plug the Ethernet cable into the router’s WAN port.
Oh okay that sounds pretty straight forward. Would it be okay to leave the virtual interface set up or would that be best removed when connecting to wired environments?
Sorry and thank you for your time.
I think all you need to do is change the Wireless Mode from Repeater.
Excellent!! Thanks again. Looking forward to receiving later this week so I can have a play.
Thanks for the post!
Does this work with hotels that first have you authenticate via a login page? I’m about to flash my WRT54GL to the mini build and was hoping this would do the trick for a hotel stay later this week.
You betcha. One of the devices connected to the router will need to log in, of course.
Hi – thanks for an informative post.
I’m trying to do something similar as I’ve moved into a hotel apartment and there’s a deadspot in the bedroom.
The hotel wifi is unsecured and authentication is done through the browser.
3 items can access through the allocated username/password for 3 people in the apartment.
Would a wifi repeater work in this instance?
Thanks in advance,
Tom
Yeah, it would work. Its exactly the same thing. All of the people in the apartment should use the same username/password. The hotel wifi will think its one device.
Any product recommendations then, specifically for this?
I’m in the UAE and not sure how many are readily available? Guessing that the D-Link ones are better than the Netgear?
And is there anything specific it needs to be able to do? For example, do I need to set the secondary to the same SSID as the Hotel Wifi?
All of the instructions are above. Whatever router you choose, it must support DD-WRT firmware.
I didn’t buy it for a while because ASUS WL-330gE manual was not clear on this. Later, I found on ASUS website their supplement manual that it has a special “hotspot” mode in the Gateway mode that would let me share wireless hotel internet. Its very easy. The device connects to the WiFi. Its cheap (got for less than $50) and its portable. No need to hack a router with DD-WRT.
1) setup your own ssid network
2) enable hotspot mode and select the available WiFi
Awesome. Thanks for the tip!
why not just use ASUS WL-330gE in hotspot mode to share wireless hotel internet?
I’m not positive, but doesn’t the ASUS WL-330gE’s hotspot require you to physically connect the device to something that has an internet connection, like a laptop connected to WiFi? Using a router hacked with DD-WRT, the device itself connects to the WiFi directly. So you can use it with, say, an iPad or WiFi-enabled phone (with no laptop involved).