Can desktop act as "wireless" router?

Yes. If you enable an ad hoc network your desktop can act as a server for other wireless devices. Just search on "ad hoc network" to see how it's done.

ok thanks.... I live in a VERY small one room efficiency apartment and trying to keep clutter down (extra wires, devices, etc). I am graduate student as well so cost is issue too

I don't have a desktop at the moment but thinking of buying one and using it as a wireless router for my laptop as well....

so the desktop would have a direct WIRED connection from the cable company INTO the unit.... and the relay wireless signals to/fro my laptop via the wireless card IN the desktop....yes?

The desktop would be leaved ON all the time and act as an "entertainment" center for me.... music, iTunes, netflix ....as well as having more horsepower for some of the app's that don't run well on my laptop

I just didn't want to buy a stand alone router if not needed...just more clutter for me

but I may be missing something.... is using a desktop in this manner just as good as any stand alone wireless router... or do the routers have some advantage I'm not seeing given my example above?

you will need a "modem" for the conversion from either DSL or Cable to an Ethernet port... then you plug into that port - either direct hard wired Ethernet single computer or a router, router/WAP, etc -

The Router/WAP is all one box - size of a paper back - so don't even think of messing with a kludge desktop solution.

It would be helpful to know what operating system you're running. I can't tell from the usenet news header. It does show that you're using Forte Agent 2.0, which is about 10 years old. Current version is 6.x. You might consider an upgrade. Anyway, that suggests some version of Windoze.

If your unspecified version of Windoze supports ICS (Internet Connection Sharing), just enable it and you have a wireless router of sorts.

There are about 5 different ways to configure your network with ICS. Since you haven't indicated how you plan to use your router, I won't bother to detail which one is appropriate. Please note that there are some rather severe limitations to what can be done with ICS versus a real router. If you have a complex setup, that requires port triggering, port forwarding, QoS, traffic management, and other features found in $40 routers, you might be disappointed with ICS. There are also some nasty bugs in ICS, which MS seems unwilling to fix. For example, if you have IPv6 enabled in your OS, ICS simply doesn't work.

Alternatively, you might look into proxy server software such as:

Hint: Buy a cheap wireless router and be done with it.

ME-

Dave's ad hoc suggestion may be the answer you need.

If your desktop computer happens to be a fairly recent Macintosh, it is flexible in being able to share its Internet connection. For example, an Ethernet connection can be shared over WiFi as you are wanting to do. I've gone as far as sharing a dial-up connection over WiFi. It was slow, but solved a problem I had at the time.

Fred

Point well taken

Now.... WHICH router to buy for watching Netflix and such?

I need good through put for video streaming

DSL, cable modem, satellite, ISDN, dialup, or two tin cans and a string?

Just about anything will work for watching Netflix. However, I'm not a big fan of watching streaming video via wireless. While a hiccup here or there won't get a reaction from a web or email download, it's really irritating when talking over VoIP or watching a video. Someone firing up a microwave oven, the neighbors wi-fi, a cordless phone, or any of several dozen assorted 2.4GHz source will make your viewing somewhat irritating. Sure, Netflix has buffering which will help, but I've noticed that most users are running right at the bitter edge of not having anything in the buffer. You can start Netflix streaming, and then hit "stop", wait for the buffer to fill (5 minutes maximum), and then watch the video, but few users have the temperament for that. None of this exists with wired ethernet connections.

I can't offer any specific recommendations without knowing what you have to work with. For evaluating various routers, I suggest you read through:

Router reviews and tests:

Tutorials:

actually that's a good point I hadn't thought of!

so you are saying that streaming video and VOIP should be hard wired right to the computer

Yes. Given the choice between wireless and wired, the best streaming video and minimum VoIP packet loss is with wired ethernet.

However, switching to wired doesn't mean that everything is going to magically work as expected. I recently fixed a home system where the owner was watching streaming video via wireless. Most of the time, it would work quite nicely. However, when his son arrived from college to visit, and brought his laptop, everything came to grinding halt. He had uTorrent running full time and at maximum bandwidth, which seriously interfered with watching streaming video (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, uStream, etc). Replacing the brain dead ancient router, with one that supported QoS (Netgear WNR3500L) made sure that the streaming apps got priority. I normally don't do that, but that's what the owner wanted. That helped, but still wasn't quite perfect. Convincing the owner to let Netflix buffer a few minutes of video in advance finally made things work.

The new router also supported 802.11n, which offered imcreased speed. That worked fine until the kid's laptop created some interference. The router immediately reverted to 802.11g speeds, and eventually slowed down enough to make streaming difficult. So much for wireless streaming.

VoIP isn't as forgiving as streaming. You can't buffer much VoIP traffic before the resultant delay becomes obvious and unbearable. I have several SIP phones and Skype running in my palatial office. If I didn't have QoS giving the varioius VoIP protocols and ports priority, VoIP would be totally unusable. Even minor random computah traffic is heard as garble without QoS.

Thanks for your advice Jeff!

well I can always TRY the ad hoc connection first and if it doesn't work go buy the wireless router second I suppose

I was in a little coffee shop that just opened. Their WiFi wasn't up yet, and they were "borrowing" access from an adjoining business.

They had some software running on a wireless Windows laptop, and it appeared as a normal WAP Infrastructure to me, not an AdHoc, as I expected.

They could have been using the lapptop to connect to the "adjoining business" using normal wi-fi and using Microsoft's Internet Connection Sharing to re-publish that via say Ethernet to their own Wireless Access Point.

"adjoining business" ^ | Wifi | \/ Laptop running Windows with Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) turned on (Essentially a NATting router) ^ | Ethernet | \/ Wireless Access Point ^ | Wifi | \/ You

I am pretty sure that would work.

Nope. No wires, no other gadgets. Just a laptop. I thought there might be two WiFi adapters, but even that would be Adhoc, I think.

ICS + Intel My WiFi mayhap?

Or maybe Microsloth Virtual Wi-Fi.

The project died in 2006, but was resurrected in Windoze 7 as Native 802.11 Virtual Wireless Fidelity

in the form of