how to turn a pc in a wireless router without the use of drivers

Hi Jeff,

first off, thanks for all the suggestions up till now.

The problem that I am trying to solve is actually quite simple: How to bum an internet connection off an xp or vista machine that only allows the most basic of functions to the default user. I.e. any machine that is controlled by a small to mid-sized company or internet cafe. As you undoubtedly experienced, an it department tends to only give the most basic of rights to the common domain user (locked down desktop, run only approved apps, only http access to the net, ftp if you are lucky, ...). As the network layers on the pc are made completely off limits and the direct network access (i.e. plugging in of router in the ethernet socket) is not accessible due to the use of nac or nap, the only place to tap into the net is from the top (layer 7), i.e. the application and use the pipe ( =3D other six layers) already in place . So after a bit of thinking I came up with following scenario:

assuming that on the locked down pc :

1) you can at least run your own application that can talk with the network stack and read from a mem stick 2) you can plug in an usb stick that looks to the usb adapter as a default memory stick

You could try the following:

1) use something like eye-fi with an sd to usb adapter and plug it into the machine 2) the stick would be identified as a standard memory stick 3) your own laptop would talk with the eye-fi as it was a wi-fi router and put his tcp packets on the stick like files 4) the app. on the pc would see those files appear, pick them up and send them over the tcp stack of the pc onto the net 5) the returning packets from the net would be put on the memory stick like files 6) the laptop would pick up those files and find the interpret the tcp packets

and voila, you circumvented most security systems in place and offered free wifi from any pc with an internet connection. I admit this would be be rather slow communication, but more than sufficient for email and blog syncing.

I understand the need to use drivers, but if you install anything more than a mem stick on most locked down machines you will run into security restrictions and not be allowed to install the driver needed. You should be fine with mem stick drivers however

true, but that one network is not open to your laptop, so you need to create a new one, based on the coffee shop one, for that you would IMHO need a router.

the scenario I described assumes a cabled network with a pc available. Unfortunately there still are not a lot of wifi hotspots to be found in SE Asia (except for the bigger cities, which I like to avoid when travelling)

again true, but just imagine what you could do if you have 1 minute access on ANY corporate pc (inserting the usb stick + starting the program as a service) =3D> wireless access on network level to the whole corporate network.

T.