The magic of Windows7 virtual Wifi

In Windows XP, everyone will open the "Network Connections" window from the Start menu or Control Panel to check network problems, but for a new Windows 7 newcomer, it seems a bit to find this window Difficult, search in the control panel & ldquo; network connection & rdquo; can not find it. At this time, everyone should think of the “Network and Sharing Center” that was introduced last time. Because it concentrates on the network-related general configuration, can you find clues here?

Try clicking on the top left “change adapter settings> task, oh, & ldquo;network connection& rdquo; window originally hidden here, this time we can view the network card in the same computer as XP The settings and status:

But some students may find that one of these cards is called "Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter", which seems to be Microsoft's virtual Wifi card by name. . How can there be such a thing in the computer for no reason? Is another hidden feature of Windows 7 found?

That's right, this is indeed a new feature in Windows7 ——“virtual Wifi", I’m sorry to have sold a lot of money in front of you. To put it simply, Windows 7 can virtualize a wireless network card based on the existing wireless network card, support network sharing, and let our computer become a wireless router! It seems that nowadays, "virtual" is really everywhere.

Some students may know that before this, in fact, you can also establish a temporary network to share the Internet with other Wifi devices. What are the new advantages of the virtual Wifi network card?

The traditional temporary wireless network (Ad Hoc mode) is a peer-to-peer network, similar to the "two-machine interconnection" in the wired network. Although it can also achieve Internet sharing, it is mainly used for two. Devices are temporarily interconnected, and some devices (such as devices with Android) do not support connecting to a temporary wireless network. There is also a serious problem. Since a wireless network card can only be connected to a wireless network, if you connect to the Internet through a wireless network card, you can no longer use this wireless network card to establish a temporary network and share the Internet.

The virtual Wifi function in Windows7 can virtualize a network card based on a real wireless network card to realize the AP function of the wireless router and solve all problems of the temporary network.

So enticing features, now teach everyone:

1. Run the command prompt as an administrator

Because the following steps must be under administrator privileges Run, so we can find the “Command Prompt” from the Start menu, or type cmd to search quickly, right click on it, select “Run as administrator”, click in the pop-up user control window “ Yes & rdquo;. Another way is to hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys and click the shortcut directly, which is even simpler.

2. Enable and set the “Virtual Wifi NIC” mode

Run the following command to enable the virtual wireless NIC (equivalent to open the router):

netsh wlan set hostednetwork Mode=allow ssid=”Win7 AP WOW!  key=wifimima

There are three parameters in this command:

Mode: Whether to enable the virtual Wifi NIC, disable to disallow, The virtual network card will disappear.

Ssid: Specify the name of the wireless network, preferably in English.

Key: Specify the password for the wireless network. This password is used for secure WPA2 encryption of the wireless network, which can prevent the network from being blocked.

The above three parameters can be used separately. For example, only mode=disallow can be used to disable the virtual Wifi card.

3. Enable <;Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)"

In order to share the connected Internet with other computers or devices, we need to enable the "Internet Connection Sharing" feature. Open the “Network Connections” window, right-click on the network connection that is connected to the Internet, select “Properties”, switch to the “Share” tab, select the checkbox in it, and select Allow it to share the Internet. The network connection is here our virtual Wifi NIC:

After the confirmation, the shared NIC icon will appear next to the “Shared” flag, indicating “Internet Connection Sharing” is opened to the virtual wireless network card. :

4. Turn on the wireless network

Continue to run the following command at the command prompt:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Set up a good wireless network (equivalent to open the wireless function of the router. Similarly, turn start to stop to turn off the wireless network).

It can be seen that the virtual wireless network card has already opened the wireless network we specified, and its IP address and other attributes are allocated by the "Internet Connection Sharing" service, so it is special:

Everything is ready, and finally you can connect to the Internet directly on a computer or mobile phone that needs to be connected to the Internet:

Need to say a little more, "Virtual Wifi NIC" needs The real network card driver is specifically designed for Windows 7 design development. Fortunately, as long as the wireless network card driver of the "Windows7 Logo Certification" is supported by this mode, we can directly find whether to bring the logo when purchasing the wireless network card. If the virtual wireless network card does not appear in the network connection after running the mode=allow command, the real network card does not support this function. You can upgrade your NIC driver to the latest Windows 7 version.

In addition to using the command to set the virtual WIFI function, Microsoft has also revealed its programming interface, which provides the possibility to develop a graphical setup program. For example, the free small software Connectify can intuitively set the virtual Wifi function. It can be downloaded and used on its official website.

In short, the introduction of this feature today is very suitable for use in home or student residences. As long as the shared computer does not sleep and does not shut down, it can provide network sharing like a router. Using Windows 7 can also save the overhead of the purchased wireless router. Think about it, it is very cost-effective?