What Is a Free WiFi Hotspot?
WiFi hotspots are either free or paid, and they employ various security protocols to mitigate security risks posed by malicious hackers. It’s paramount to avoid using unsecured WiFi hotspots. Such hotspots can be recognized by the absence of strong WiFi password validation procedures.
Feb 20, 2019 Here's how to connect to your Personal Hotspot: On your Mac, use the Wi-Fi status menu in the menu bar to choose the name of the iPhone or iPad providing your Personal Hotspot. On your iPad, iPod touch, or another iPhone, go to Settings Wi-Fi, then tap the name of the iPhone or iPad providing your Personal Hotspot. Jun 25, 2018 To activate the Wi-Fi hotspot which you just set up select the checkbox to the left of Internet Sharing. All Wi-Fi enabled devices that come within the range of the hotspot will be ready to establish a connection. How to use a Mac as a Wi-Fi Hotspot Sharing from a Wi-Fi Connection. Sharing Wi-Fi connection from Mac can also be done. Spectrum WiFi is available at places you go around town and around the country, from New York to Orlando, Dallas to LA. Turn on your device's WiFi to connect anytime you're within range of a hotspot. To automatically connect and get online even faster, install a WiFi profile using the My Spectrum app.
Unsecured hotspots are a common target of cybercriminals, and some cybercriminals even deploy such hotspots themselves to capture passwords and other sensitive information of those who connect to them.
You should never connect to a WiFi hotspot that doesn’t use at least the WPA security protocol. This protocol has been available since 2003 as a successor to the previous system, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which is now considered to be insufficiently secure.
Ideally, you should only connect to WiFi hotspots secured with WPA2 because it supports an AES-based encryption mode to provide strong security. Soon, there will also be WiFi hotspots with WPA3, which uses 192-bit encryption and individualized encryption for each user.
This latest WiFi security standard was announced in January 2018, and it will, in addition to other things, mitigate security issues posed by weak passwords and simplify the process of setting up devices with no display interface, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.
You can’t share a Wi-Fi connection via a Wi-Fi hotspot on Mac. Well, not natively. This may sound weird but Windows has had this functionality for a while and even the latest Android smartphones let you do that. In this article, we’ll create a WiFi hotspot on Mac using a Wi-Fi adaptor. Let’s Begin.
Before we begin
Let’s understand the problem first.
Macs, unlike Windows and Android, can not share a single Wi-Fi adapter. In simple words, the WiFI adapter on Mac only works in a single-mode, i.e. either it’ll be connected to a Wi-Fi network or creates its own WiFI hotspot. But it can’t do both at the same time.
We can get around this problem using a simple Wi-Fi adaptor. For this article, we are using this TP-Link Nano USB Wifi Dongle which costs around $13 on Amazon. Once you buy it, all the tools you need to share your Mac’s Wi-Fi connection are built right in.
Must Read: How to share Hotel Wi-Fi with multiple devices
Create and Share a Wi-Fi hotspot on a Mac
Grab your Wi-Fi adaptor and plug it to your Mac. If it isn’t detected automatically, install the appropriate drivers from the website of your product.
Turn Mac Into A Hotspot
Once you have the drivers and the application installed, open the application and connect to your home Wi-Fi network using the Wi-Fi adaptor. In my case, I have the application sits on the Menubar and I can access it easily.
Free Wifi Hotspot For Laptop Macbook Pro
Read: Best Calendar Apps that you can access from Menubar
Now, we have the TP-Link wireless adaptor acting as a WNIC so we’ll use it to access the internet and share the internet access using Macbook’s WiFi. Open System Preferences on the computer and select Sharing.
Baidu Wifi Hotspot For Mac
Under Internet Sharing, select 802.11 NIC from the drop-down menu against “Share your connection from”. Now Wifi will appear in the box below. Check the box against Wi-Fi under “To computers using”.
Hotspot Shield Mac
Now click on “Wi-Fi Options“. Here you can edit the name, password, and security of your Wi-Fi adaptor. After making the changes click “OK”.
Make sure you turn the Internet Sharing option. Check the Internet Sharing box to enable Wi-Fi sharing and you have a hotspot with active internet.
Also Read: Keyboard shortcuts for Mac that every user should know
Create Wifi Hotspot Mac
This was a quick way to create a Wi-Fi hotspot on your Mac. The Wi-Fi adapter is an inexpensive way to achieve this, however, I’ll keep looking if we can achieve this without using any external hardware whatsoever. Try this on your Mac and let me know if you face any problems, I’d be happy to help you out.