On GNOME 3.30, especially on Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish", we can share our internet connection to our friends or phones by making a WLAN hotspot on laptop while we already have the access from another WLAN hotspot. Please remember this method requires you to have two wifi adapters (for example, one built-in and one USB dongle); one as receiver and one as transmitter. This short guide illustrates how to do it in very, very simple way. Enjoy!
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Objective
- You have a laptop and a smartphone.
- You are in a wifi hotspot cafe or such place.
- Your laptop got an internet access from cafe, but not your smartphone.
- You share your internet access from laptop to your smartphone.
- You use two adapters, one for receiving (from cafe), and one for transmitting (to smartphone).
Double Adapters?
Yes, you need two adapters in order to make this working without worries. You can buy a cheap wifi USB dongle from --for instance-- Technoethical or ThinkPenguin store (they're certified by FSF to Respects Your Freedom). In my system, I have one preinstalled in my laptop, and another one is a small USB dongle. Once you enable the two adapters, you will see your System Settings look like this.
In this example, I use Broadcom as the transmitter, and Ralink as the receiver.
(left: Broadcom, right: Ralink)
2. Setup The Receiver
Nothing new. Go to System Settings > Wi-Fi and just be sure you are connected to your cafe hotspot under the name of receiver. In this example, it's Ralink.
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| (the receiver connected to "seamless@wifi.id" cafe hotspot) |
3. Setup The Transmitter
Here, under the transmitter Broadcom: click hamburger button > Turn On Wifi Hotspot > a hotspot created with your computer name > you see the password under the name. Okay, now you are ready as a second-level hotspot.
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| (the transmitter creates a hotspot called "master" with a password) |
4. Connect Your Phone to The Transmitter's Hotspot
Test it with your phone. Use your smartphone to find an access point with your computer name and enter the password shown on your laptop screen. If anything goes alright, you can access the internet in your smartphone. You can share connection with your friends, too!
In case you wonder what you can do with it:
- in your phone, you can update your F-Droid
- also, you can browse the internet and get mails
- also, recover your Telegram account (in case you get login error suddenly)
- your friends' laptops can connect to your laptop-made hotspot
- etc.
Enjoy!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.