Member Avatar for alaa sam

Hi everyone
I want to make an ad-hoc network so that I can share the Internet connection from my laptop with my mobile phone . I watched some videos about this but non of them works . Can anyone help me please ?

Thanks in advance .

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Short answer: for a phone to use your laptop's Internet you usually need the laptop to run as an infrastructure access point (AP) or share via Bluetooth/USB — an ad‑hoc (IBSS) network often won’t work because many phones won’t join ad‑hoc networks. clarified you want the opposite of a phone hotspot; ’s hotspot idea is the reverse direction. Below are practical steps and quick troubleshooting to get an AP-based share working on Mint 14.

First check whether your wireless card/driver supports AP mode:

sudo iw list | grep -A 10 "Supported interface modes"

Look for AP in that list. If AP is present you can run hostapd; a minimal hostapd.conf looks like:

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=MyLaptopAP
hw_mode=g
channel=6
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=ChangeMeStrong
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

hostapd handles the AP; you still need DHCP (eg. dnsmasq) and NAT. Enable forwarding and NAT (replace eth0 and wlan0 with your actual interfaces):

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o wlan0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT

If AP is missing, options are: get a USB wifi adapter that supports AP, use Bluetooth PAN (pair phone, enable NAP on laptop), or try USB reverse tethering (often requires extra tools or root). Note: NetworkManager’s “Create new wireless network” historically creates an ad‑hoc network — phones usually won’t join that, so prefer hostapd or a dedicated hotspot feature if your NM version has one.

Troubleshooting: stop NetworkManager while testing so it doesn’t claim the interface (sudo service network-manager stop), watch dmesg and hostapd logs for driver errors, verify interface names with ip addr, and persist iptables rules with iptables-save/restore. Always use WPA2 and a strong passphrase.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

It depends upon one thing: your phone account. Does it support using your phone for tethering or as a WiFi "hotspot"? Most will allow that, but usually charge you a premium for the privilege. You configure your phone as a WiFi hotspot, and then connect your computer and (usually up to 4 others - 5 max) others to the WiFi SSID that the phone would then be broadcasting. I have done this frequently with my Android phone on my AT&T phone account. It is exactly the same as connecting to any public (or private) WiFi access point.

Member Avatar for alaa sam

The interet connection is on my laptop , what you have mentioned rubberman I have done before , but what I want now is the opposite . I want to connect to the internet from my mobile phone using the connection I have got on my laptop .

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