How to become a walking wifi hot spot!

Every now and then I come across a little utility and think how useful could this be and why don’t more people know about? This is what happened to me when I stumbled across WMWifiRouter when doing some research on my Palm Treo Pro Smartphone.

Now my Palm Treo comes with data access - i.e. I can look at Internet sites on my phone and I can also get on the Internet on my laptop using a USB cable to my phone or via Bluetooth. In there own rights this is really useful for me. Because a lot of the phone contracts now have pretty good priced data rates for say 5GB of data downloaded in a month it is actually better value for me to use this than paying an over the top Wifi rate in a hotel. Don’t get me wrong a lot of the time it makes sense to use the free Wifi when available in places such as McDonalds etc. But when you have to pay or are in the middle of nowhere the mobile phone connection comes into its own. When I am on my own with a laptop and mobile phone the USB or Bluetooth can work fine. But what if I have a colleague with me? Or two or three people with me? Or I have more than one computer? This is where WMWifiRouter comes into its own - by sharing the mobile Internet access as Wifi so more than one device/person can use it.

Installation Requirements

First of all WMWifiRouter is only for Windows mobile devices – i.e. the operating system running on your phone. If you need this sort of a facility on a Symbian based smartphone you need something like “JoikuSpot”. WMWifiRouter is supported on Windows Mobile 5 AKU 3.3 or newer or Windows Mobile 6.x. Your smartphone will also need to have a wifi connection (not all do) and have Windows Mobile "Internet Sharing" available - some providers get rid of this built in feature. If you intend having a look at this software you can find a section for "Compatible Devices" on the web site. This not only lists devices (phones) that can share the Internet connection but those that are known to be able to receive it. Because of the way the phone creates ad hoc wireless networks some devices such as certain games consoles cannot connect to it.

Installation

The software can be installed by either downloading an EXE file to your PC and then installing using ActiveSync or directly to the phone as a CAB file. The file is around 2.5MB in size. Either way the actual installation is the same.

The installation itself is via the usual "Set-up Wizard". You are firstly asked which connection you want to "share out". On my Palm Treo I was offered "Contract WAP", "Contract MMS", "Vodafone prepay GPRS" or "Contract Internet". I shared out my contract Internet.

You are then asked what name you want to broadcast your wireless network out as when complete - by default this is WMWifiRouter but you can change this.

Next you are asked to generate a WEP key. Just in case you don’t know WEP is a way of securing your wireless connections. Some people may think that WEP is not good enough these days for security reasons and this software does not support the newer WPA standards. However what I would say is that because of the nature of moving around with a mobile phone and perhaps not using this system all the time it would be pretty hard for someone to stumble across your system looking to "hack" into your network and having enough time to crack the WEP security. But if security is a key concern this is certainly worth noting. And that’s it for the actual installation

Usage

The application is started by selecting "WMWifiRouter" from Programs. You are greeted with a simple display of six icons, one of which is "Exit" with the others being -

3G to Wifi

This is the main reason to use this application as stated above. Starting this will share the Internet connection on your mobile phone as Wifi allowing numerous people to connect at once.

3G to USB and
3G to Bluetooth

Now I have to say I am not totally sure as to what the 3G to USB and Bluetooth options bring to the party. The reason I say this is because I think you can do this using the built in "Internet Sharing" that is available in Windows Mobile. ActiveSync is needed for the USB method to work. Using USB does use less power than Wifi.

Wifi to USB
This allows you to pick up a Wifi signal on your smartphone and then deliver internet access to a laptop with a USB cable. So in other words say you go somewhere with free Wifi you pick this up on your mobile but access the Internet on your laptop. Now if you have Wifi available on your laptop (which most do now) you don’t need to this as far as I can tell.

USB to Wifi
Not to be confused with Wifi to USB above! Best way of looking at this one is with an example. Two or three people with laptops go to an office/hotel that has one wired internet connection which you can connect to on one of the laptops. You then plug that laptop into the smartphone via USB and the smartphone shares this out via Wifi. The other 2 people can then get on the Internet also (presuming there laptops have Wifi cards).

To start your connection you just click on one of the 5 relevant buttons above. Once this has done it takes around 15 seconds in the 3G to wifi connection to become enabled.

Connecting was easy enough. My laptop was given an IP address of 192.168.3.85 with a default gateway of 192.168.3.1 which was the smartphone.

2 buttons are then shown -

A graph which is you click on shows an overview of inbound and outbound traffic as well as wifi and battery usage

A simple red "X" lets you end the session.

Overall

Using this connection from my laptop was good for web browsing. Don’t forget at the end of the day its only going to be as good as the Internet connection on your mobile. Also before sharing out mobile Internet connections you need to make sure you understand how your data contract is working and how much you are allowed to download etc. With data rate prices coming down though will we see the day when you just need a mobile phone in your house for everyone to get on the Internet?

Finally with regard to the mobile phone itself. What I did notice is that battery consumption of my smartphone went down pretty quick and the phone certainly got warmer. If using for any length of time you would need your mobile plugged into power I think. I should also add that the network is not dropped if you are talking on the phone - quite an important point! The software is available on a 30 day trial from the web site so if anything in this review sounds useful it certainly worth giving it a try.