How To Share Your Internet Connection
Recently I asked for some user-contributed content for the site, and while I didn’t get the amount of feedback that I’d like, I did get one good suggestion that I knew I needed to pass on. How to share your internet connection. This tutorial outlines, in a very simple way, how to share your wired connection by creating an ad-hoc wireless broadcast. I imagine this would be great for LUG meetings and small gatherings where wireless is lacking but there is limited wired connectivity. Thanks to Aaron for the suggestion.
Requirements
In order to share your wired connection and create an ad-hoc wireless network you will need the following:
- An active wired network connection
- Functional wireless network device
- Network Manager 0.7 or later
- dnsmasq-base package installed
Installation and Configuration
The requirements above are pretty easy to come by. Network Manager 0.7 or later should be installed by default on any Ubuntu version past 8.10 (Intrepid, Jaunty and later). The dnsmasq-base package can be installed using the command (or clicking the link):
sudo aptitude install dnsmasq-base
At this point you should have all of your requirements met and we can move on to creating the ad-hoc wireless network.
Click on the Network Manager icon and select “Create New Wireless Network”.
You’ll be prompted to define a Network Name and optional Wireless Security Level. Once you define these values and activate you should be able to see a new SSID listed and begin sharing your connection. Enjoy!