Networking black magic with Connectify
Tuesday February 9th 2010
Every now and then you come across a piece of software so simple and so brilliant that you can’t believe that nobody has come up with it before. Connectify is one such piece of software.
Picture the scenario: I’ve just moved into a new office and for some reason that nobody seems to be able to explain it’s going to take two weeks to get my broadband connected. To say that’s a pain is an understatement.
So as a temporary measure I went out and bought a PAYG 3G dongle from T-Mobile. I didn’t want any ongoing contract as once I get my broadband online I doubt I’ll use it, but at the same time I didn’t want to shell out over the top for PAYG top-up data fees. Shopping around I managed to get one from the high street for £39 with 90 days unlimited usage (although a fair usage policy still applies for obvious reasons).
Plugged it in and boom, instant internet, and with pretty good speeds too. Brilliant. However, I have three computers in my office (a Win 7 laptop, a Win 7 desktop, and an iMac), and I could really do with accessing the internet on more than one of them at once, otherwise my productivity over the next couple of weeks is going to be somewhat hampered.
I already had a fixed network between them using static IP addresses so I can access my network printer, so my thinking was that I could share the dongle-based network connection between the other computers. Hmm, nice idea on paper, but a day and a half later mucking about with ICS and Ad Hoc networking I gave up.
Then today, as I was browsing around for something else, I stumbled across Connectify, and within five minutes my problems were solved.
Connectify is an ingeniously clever piece of software which sets up an Ad Hoc network and shares your internet connection over it, all within a couple of clicks. All you need to do is install it, give it an SSID and a WPA2 password and you’ve got a wi-fi network, ready with internet access ready to share amongst whoever you choose. The very best bit about it however, is that it is free.
I installed it on my Win 7 laptop, configured the options and then turned on Airport on the iMac, and seconds later had full internet access on both machines. Simple and seamless.
Hat’s off to the guys over at Connectify. Go grab yourself a copy now.
