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On Windows, my laptop's wireless card had the ability to share its own internet by Wi-Fi Direct. I could connect by laptop to other devices via Intel's My Wi-Fi program, which I believe uses Wi-Fi Direct, and then share my internet to them. Is there any way to do this in Ubuntu?

My laptop model: Samsung NP300E5A. My wireless card: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 130.

Thanks!

EDIT: I am using Ubuntu 12.04. Also, I am not trying to share my ethernet connection. I am trying to share my wireless connection to other Wi-Fi devices. See here.

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4 Answers 4

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+25

Seems like you have misunderstood WiFi Direct use case. WiFi Direct is not about sharing the connection (as you wrote it), but a peer-to-peer communication without involving AP.

The sad truth is that you cannot mix WiFi Direct with Station mode, which so far makes the whole idea of using WiFi Direct pretty useless. At least I'm not aware about any solution that is capable of doing that.

My advise to you - wait at least couple of years until this technology will be widely supported. Currently, since this technology is primarily driven by Sony, WiFi Direct is already present in their TV's, so you can stream videos/photos to Sony TV directly from your WiFi Direct supported device. Excerpt from the same link:

Sometimes your friends want to share their personal photos and videos on your beautiful HDTV. With Sony's Wi-Fi Direct™ Mode, your friends can throw personal content to your TV without connecting to your home network. Wi-Fi Direct completely bypasses the Wi-Fi access point/router, so it’s easy to set up.

By the way, latest Android version supports WiFi Direct as well, Galaxy Nexus has it.

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  • Samsung phones support Wi-Fi Direct. It would be great if the answer explicitly included information on Wi-Fi Direct support under Ubuntu.
    – user239558
    Feb 25, 2013 at 12:49
  • Now, nearly a year later after I wrote my answer, every Android OEM supports WiFi-Direct.
    – Andrejs Cainikovs
    Feb 25, 2013 at 15:15
  • Nowadays, not only Samsung phones support this, most newer Android do. I have an LG G3 (2014 technology) and it works great, I can watch a movie from my phone on the huge Samsung TV with only one click (tap actually). I can do the same from the laptop to the TV if I use Windows 10. It would be great to be able to do it in Ubuntu.
    – conualfy
    Apr 9, 2016 at 17:38
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This is well documentated in Ubuntu Community Help Wiki.

Because is a large text, i send the link: WifiDocs/ShareEthernetConnectionThroughWireless

Good luck.

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  • 2
    +'d for pointing out that the documentation does exist :)
    – Zuul
    May 16, 2012 at 12:40
  • This is not about WiFi-Direct, is it?
    – Alexey
    Jul 4, 2022 at 21:18
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This link contains all the help you need, it solved this same issue for me too >> http://mydailyhash.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/internet-connection-sharing-on-ubuntu-windows-with-ad-hoc-2/

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  • Thank you, but this does not solve my problem. Your article is about sharing an Ubuntu laptop's Ethernet connection to a Windows laptop via Wi-Fi, whereas I'm trying to share my Ubuntu laptop's Wi-Fi via Wi-Fi.
    – funkeh
    May 6, 2012 at 22:06
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As @Andrejs Cainikovs says the technology is not wi-fi direct. So reading your question and answer, let me rephrase your question.

You are connected to internet via wi-fi and want to share it over the same device by creating some access point. Am I right?

If so, I am afraid at the time of writing this case is not possible in any other OS other than windows 7 (may be the list will include win8).

Windows 7 has internal support to create a wlan hosted network. In windows if you open the network and internet → Network Connections, you can see with your actual wlan device there are one or two extra device described as Microsoft virtual wi-fi miniport like below.

wi-fi virtual

This is virtualization of physical adapter. Read more about it here.

To achieve this requirement you need to by a wireless device/wireless repeater. :)

Smiler Question : -

https://superuser.com/questions/233924/share-a-wifi-connection-through-wifi-on-mac-os-x

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