SeventhGate

SeventhGate is a program that can turn your Internet connection into an access point for other wireless enabled devices. In order to achieve this, it uses the wireless network card embedded inside your computer.

The upsides of the utility is that it’s quite easy to setup and can run quietly in the system tray without bothering you from your work. On the downside, it only works on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 computers.

The reason for this is that Wi-Fi virtualization was firstly introduced to these two operating systems, which at the time of the program’s development reflected in poor OS support.

If you attempt to run it on an unsupported operating system, the options inside the GUI will be completely disabled and an error message will be displayed at the bottom of the main window.

Provided that it is used with the proper OS, the utility can pay off the expected results in very few steps. First and foremost, you are required to enter the network name, accompanied by a password (which is necessary for a device to access your shared connection) and set a limit on the number of concurrent clients.

After you’ve completed these steps, you may start the connection, at which point other devices will be able to detect your computer as a hotspot. The connected devices will be listed as soon as they enroll the wireless network, together with their IP and MAC address. Other options allow you to forward ports or to enable MAC filtering.

SeventhGate can prove to be a reliable application that accomplishes its job. Nonetheless, the incompatibility issues with more modern OSes is a major downside.