Transmitting Wifi Signal From PC?

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Apologies if this is an utterly noob question, I've looked through the FAQ and used Search but I can't quite get the answer to my question.

I currently have a Ethernet cable plugged into the back of my PC pumping glorious internets into my computer.

Is it possible to transmit a wifi signal from my PC via a PCI-E wireless card for my other devices (Macbook, iPad, phone, etc) to use? Is this what a "Gateway" is? Do I need some fancy software to enable this?

Or should I purchase another router and plug the ethernet cable into that, and just connect the devices via wifi off the second router?

Thanks in advance.
 
Its possible, but a bit of a pain on windows and i wouldnt really want to suggest it.

if you dont want to replace your current router with one that has wifi built in i'd guess your next option would be a wireless access point.

Not suggesting this AP, but just giving you a link to what i mean.
Access Point
 
Thanks for the link. My current router has wifi built in, but its range is a bit poor and doesn't extend to some rooms in the house.

Just to confirm, I can plug an ethernet cable into this AP and I would be able to connect my wifi devices to the signal transmitted by this AP, whilst also keeping an ethernet cable connection to my PC?
 
No you'd need a switch to share the network between the access point and your computer.

You can either get a separate switch and access point or an all in one solution such as http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-015-OK which is the cheapest 4 port router N access point that OcUK stock. One drawback here is that this is likely to be only 100Mbps rather than gigabit. You'd need to turn off DHCP and make sure the ip of the router doesn't clash and is on the same ip range but apart from that it should be simple to set up.

Or you could get a USB wireless network adapter that supports Soft-AP mode and use your computer's Processing power to act as a router/access point. Might save a few quid but you'd need your computer to be on to use the wireless connection.
 
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If your current router has a spare ethernet port, yes you can plug the access point into that.

You cannot plug the AP directly into your PC, atleast not with great easy as it should be possible.

If you cannot run another ethernet cable to where you want the access point to be placed. You could use homeplug's to extrend the range.

But if your current wifi is just crap, and you want to connect the AP into your router then yes this would work.
 
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