Connectify was a great freeware but has now became a paid service, luckily there are many alternatives available for creating virtual wi-fi hotspot on your computer. OSToto Hotspot is yet another freeware tool with a weird name to get the job done, the utility is FREE and has no advertising to bug you. All it takes is a single-click to create a virtual Wi-Fi hotspot on your laptop/notebook/desktop computer with a working wireless adapter turning it into a Wi-Fi wireless access point. The utility supports all flavors of Windows OS including Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, XP, Vista, Windows Server and comes with WPA2 PSK password security to safe guard your wifi hotspot from authorized usage.

WiFi has been considered and promoted as being "a safe form of radiation" when under limits, however combine the overall exposure from multiple neighboring WiFi hotspots and you might have an over-limit exposure. There are numerous cases of "radiation sensitive" users complaining about health symptoms associated with WiFi usage which go away as soon as they get away from it. Common problems reported are feeling tired, Unable to concentrate, Negative thinking, depressive thoughts, less sleep etc.

Do watch the Canadian Documentary - "WiFi in schools proven dangerous" posted below (after clicking the Read more button below) which reports and investigates how WiFi exposure is causing heart problems, headaches and other neurological disorders in children.

Imagine the confusion when your WiFi network is showing all available WiFi access points in the neighborhood except the one you want to connect to, adding more confusion - the same access-point is visible and connectable from other devices. Since, your WiFi access-point is visible from other devices and your WiFi client can see other access-point we can be sure that the two particular devices are working fine and are only having issues communicating to each other.

As per the standard design all Wi-Fi equipments must share spectrum bandwidth which are spaced around multiple channels bands with other networks in the same operational environment. Many neighbouring WiFi devices sharing or overlapping a channel can slow down the performance of all Wi-Fi networks on that channel, and therefore utilizing a WiFi scanner to analyze and fix proper channel usage is highly advisable for optimal wireless performance.

We will be using free WiFi scanner and analyzer inSSIDer (available on Windows, Mac and Android platforms) to tackle this need for us. inSSIDer Wi-Fi network discovery tool conveniently visualizes all wireless hotspot’s in your devices range complete with information of there MAC address, encryption, signal strength and channel allowing users to troubleshoot numerous WiFi related issues.

The way WiFi channels work, one can make use of the information analyzed and visualized using inSSIDer to fine tune wireless bandwidth usage for maximum throughput and minimum interference as described ahead.

As you can see the way wireless bandwidth channels work, There are 14 channels designated in the 2.4 GHz WiFi range spaced 5 MHz apart with adjacent channels overlapping and interfering with each other. As evident from the diagram shared below, using channels 1, 6, 11 is recommended for the minimum overlapping and interference avoidance. A user must also make sure to use the least congested channel availble for best results.

While Microsoft Windows 7 is the mainstream Windows OS in use now, people still prefer and use Windows XP. I recently came across an Windows XP specific issue, where the computer detected security enabled WiFi networks but failed to connect with them as shown below.

As evident from the error message above and pretty descriptive error-icon shown below, Windows XP SP2 is having issues trying to negotiate security certificate. To fix this, enabling WPA and WPA2 encryption support on Windows XP in Wireless Group Policy (WGP) we need to install KB917021 update from Microsoft.

While Bzeek offers an excellent free utility to share your internet connection over WiFi, another free and open source software based router for computers using Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 is "Virtual Router".

As the name suggests, the software enables users to wirelessly share any internet connection on there PC/laptop (Wifi, LAN, Cable Modem, Dial-up, Cellular, etc.) with any Wifi device (Laptop, Smart Phone, iPod Touch, iPhone, Android Phone, Zune, Netbook, wireless printer, etc.) without requiring an dedicated WiFi router hardware, this "advertisement free" (unlike Connectify) utility creates an "Virtual Router" by utlizing Windows 7 built-in adhoc WiFi sharing capabilities - the acess-point created is completely secured using WPA2.