Accessing your home Internet connection on your iPhone

I used to share a place with some friends, back in Brazil some years ago. At first we didn't have a router, but we had an internet connection, and wanted to share it through our laptops over WiFi. That was when I discovered this possibility. Nowadays I have an iPhone, and I didn't buy unlimited internet over 3G, so it came handy to share my laptop's internet connection to the iPhone. Actually, you can access your internet connection without any extra piece of hardware, and you'll be able to use from your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other device that has a wireless card.

What do you need?

1. Laptop or desktop with WiFi (wireless) card. I'll call this the #1 device.
   
2. Internet connection working on your #1 device.
3. An iPhone, iPod Touch or something that has wireless capabilities. I'll call this the #2 device.
4. Some patience.

Rest assured that you don't have to be a geek to get through this. A friend of mine bought a Macbook last week, and was able to share her home connection without any problems. You will have to do some "hacking", though. By "hacking", I mean you're gonna have to play around with devices #1 and #2.

What do you have to do?

1. Setup an adhoc network on device #1. Windows, Linux and Mac.
   
2. Connect to device #1's adhoc network using device #2.
3. Share your internet connection on device #1. Windows, Linux and Mac.

Besides each step, you can see the links for different platforms. I only did this on Windows XP, and on a Slackware Linux machine (I love Slack..), but it should work on any computer. If you're using linux, I might not be able to help you so much, since I'm not familiar with newer distributions. But if you're using linux, I believe you're able to deal with computers better than most people do, and setting this up is pretty easy.

Ad hoc networks can be pretty handy, actually. If you have a desktop and a laptop, and want to share your internet connection, this would be the way to go: no blue cables around the house. The range isn't small, but it isn't big either, and ad hoc networks aren't as fast as just using a router. If you're going to meet some friends to play computer games (DotA, Warcraft 3 or Counter Strike), it works wonders, and you don't need cables or hubs.

If you have any questions, comments or need any help, feel free to mail me.