In this Instructable I plan to demonstrate how anyone can use a utility to funnel multiple networks to one computer and how to create a connectable wifi hotspot.

Why would I want to do this? Simple. I will use my own situation as an example. I am at college right now, and on our campus we have two basic networks for student use: Wireless and Wired. Our wireless spans anywhere from 5-10 Mb/s with random drops when there are many users. The wired connection gets from 10-15 Mb/s and I very rarely notice any lag spikes on this connection. So both of these connections, while fast are unreliable and lets face it, it can always be faster.

I will divide this tutorial into only 2 more steps after this one; the next will be on how to Dispatch the networks and the following step will be on how to create the network.

For this instructable you will need:
A computer with multiple ways to connect to networks (i.e. lan cards, wifi cards, etc.)
Connectify (this program is NOT free. It offers to buy connectify or dispatch or both. We will use both, however if you only want to combine networks, you only need dispatch and if you want to create a wifi hotspot then you only need connectify)

Moving on...

Step 1: Combining Networks Using Dispatch

Dispatch is a plug in for connectify that essentially allows you to connect to different networks on different devices (wifi, lan) and then channel the connections togeather to get faster and more stable internet use.

To start off download and install Dispatch. You will need to restart your computer and then you can boot up the program.

Start the program by clicking the icon and then access it through the system tray. Next you will see a fairly straight forward window with your bandwidth usage and your internet adapters on the bottom. There you can see what adapter is connected to what along with the latency and reliability. For my set up I chose to make my wired connection my "primary connection" by picking it in the drop down menu. I chose this as my primary because it is overall the fastest and most reliable of my two connections. I then set my wireless connection as my "backup" connection. The backup connection simply augments the primary network when possible for greater speed and also is there as, well, a backup in case the primary connection fails.

Once you set these two, you are all done this step! you can head over to speedtest.net and check out the difference.

Step 2: Creating a Wifi Hotspot With Connectify

The next step is to create the wifi hotspot. Go ahead and click on connectify in your toolbar and you will be presented with a small screen.

To start, enter a name for you hotspot to appear as, the default is Connectify-me. Next, set a password and pick which internet to share. For this you can choose a single adapter or dispatch. Chosing a single adapter will essentially channel all internet traffic on the hotspot straight to that internet port. If you followed the last step, you can choose dispatch which will allow your hotspot to access the internet pool you have created earlier.

When you have finished you can click on the "start hotspot" button and your good to go! just connect your devices to it and enjoy blazing fast internet.