Most households can have more than one device connects to the internet. Using a VPN or Virtual Private Network to secure these internet connections on all devices have become a critical necessity, especially with all the snooping, censorship and online threats that are taking place all over the world. For that reason, most VPNs in the market today provide their users with the ability to connect more than one device with the same subscription. For those that do not provide this feature and also if the user wants to connect even more devices than available, this can be done by sharing the VPN connection over the Wi-Fi internet connection. In this tutorial we will be showing the VPN users how to share the VPN connection over the Wi-Fi connection, on Windows 10 hence having all devices enjoy a secure internet connection. This can be achieved through a few very simple steps on the user’s Windows 10 device.
1- Click on the “Search” icon in the task bar
2- Type in “cmd” and right click on the “command prompt” icon
3- Select “Open as administrator” and when asked for “administrator’s permission” in the pop-up box, click on “yes”
4- In the “Command Prompt” window type in the command “netsh wlan show drivers” and press enter
5- In order to proceed, the generated outcome should include “Hosted network supported: yes”. If it does not then a USB Wi-Fi adaptor that supports this feature can be used instead
6- Close the “Command Prompt” and open it again (as done in steps 1, 2, and 3)
7- Type in “netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Your_SSID key=Your_Passphrase“
Note: SSID is the name that will be given to the wireless network that any new device will be connected to and Passphrase is the network security key used to connect to this network (it has to be at least 8 characters.
8- Now that the host network is created, enter “netsh wlan start hostnetwork” to activate it
Sharing the Internet Connection with the Hosted Network
In order to make the hosted network created accessible to other devices, it has to be shared using the “Internet Connection Sharing” feature from a physical network adaptor.
1- Press and hold “Windows Key + X” to open the power user menu
2- Select “Network Connections”
3- In the “Network Connections” window, right click on the Network Adaptor of your main internet connection, whether it’s a wireless connection or an ethernet connection
4- Select “Properties”
Note: In the same “Network Connections” window, you should see a new Microsoft Hosted Virtual Adaptor labeled “Local Area Connection X” with the SSID name.
5- At the top of the properties window, click on the “Sharing” tab
6- Click on the checkbox labeled “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection“
7- Click on the drop-down menu labeled “Home networking connection” and select the Microsoft Hosted Virtual Adaptor
8- Click on “Ok” to finish
At this point once the main Windows 10 device is connected to the internet through a VPN connection it can simply activate the Wi-Fi Hotspot feature and any device that connects to the network will be secured with the same VPN connection. This is how you share a VPN connection through a Wi-Fi connection on Windows 10.
