Turn your PC into a home WiFi repeater with this trick

home wifi repeater windows 10

Resorting to a WiFi repeater when the network does not reach every corner of our house can be the cheapest solution to an increasingly common problem. The problem is that most WiFi repeaters start at a price of 20 euros if we talk about basic repeaters and 30 or 40 euros if we talk about somewhat more advanced extenders. Fortunately, Windows 10 allows us to configure a computer as a home WiFi repeater without too many complications, and this time we will teach you how to proceed in a simple way.

The steps that we will see below are compatible with versions of Windows from Windows 7 to Windows 10 , through Windows 8 and 8.1.

First step: make use of the Windows CMD

Before proceeding with the configuration in the Windows Control Panel we will have to resort to the system's CMD to create the network in question. Simply type the word CMD in the Windows search engine and right click on the program to open the program with administrator privileges .

home wifi repeater netsh windows 1

Once inside, the next thing we will have to do is enter the command that we will see below:

  • netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode = allow ssid = networkname key = networkpassword

Together with the ssid and key commands  of the netsh command we will have to write a network name and a password to create the access point to the WiFi network. The only essential requirement is that the password must contain between 8 and 16 characters . Not one more, not one less. Nor can we include rare or uncommon characters in either the name or the network password (asterisks, commas, periods ...). For example:

  • netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode = allow ssid = extenderwifi key = 123456789

After applying the command, Windows will create a network with the parameters that we have just assigned based on the WiFi or Ethernet network to which we are connected. To start the network in question we will enter the following command:

  • netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Et voilà . From now on, any device can connect to the network we just created. There is only one last step left: share the Internet connection of our main network with the new one.

How to share Internet with home WiFi repeater

We have everything ready. The next step will be to go to the Network and Internet section in the Windows Control Panel. Within this menu we will go to the network to which we are currently connected, that is, the one provided by the Internet .

Turn your PC into a home WiFi repeater with this trick 1

Then we will right click on the network in question and select Properties . In the Sharing section that we can see in the upper tab we will mark the two boxes that we can see below: Allow users of other networks to connect through the Internet connection of this equipment and Allow users of other networks disable or control Internet connection sharing.

home wifi extender repeater

Finally we will click Apply and Accept . Now we can connect to the Internet through the WiFi network that we just created.

How to turn off the WiFi repeater

If what we want is to turn off the WiFi repeater from the computer where we have created the network, we will have to use a netsh command again . The following, specifically:

  • netsh wlan stop hostednetwork

After closing the bridge, we can start the network again through the following command:

  • netsh wlan start hostednetwork

As you may have imagined, it will not be necessary to create the network again to access it from other devices, just start it from the previous command.