Notices

I was sitting in the airport one day, and I had an idea.

Being at the extremely far end of the airport, wi-fi coverage on my laptop was spotty at best, and then it hit me.

I wondered if there was a way to use the N800 as a USB wireless adapter.

Thinking about this on my plane, I remembered that the wireless driver was closed source, and locked it away for long-term storage.

Recently, however, I read about the newly released wireless chipset driver for the N8XX tablets, and decided to post about my idea.

So, dear readers, what do you think?

-Would this be possible?
-Would it require a new project?
-Could it simply be done in an easier way?
-Would it be OS-independent?

-Jake

So youre in a poor wifi reception area which your laptop is having trouble with. What maKes you think that the receiver&transmitter in the N8oo will be any better?

I can only speak for myself, but my N800 can lock on to and use access points which my laptop can't even see. My laptop needs a strong, nearby access point. My N800 seems to be an order of magnitude more sensitive.

The simplest way to get something of the OP's idea to work is as first step to be able to log in to the N800 through something else than wi-fi. That could be USB or BlueTooth.

With only that part running one could let the N8x0 hook up to the AP and then ssh from the laptop to the N8x0, with a tunnel. For example:
laptop$ ssh -L8080:localhost:8118 ip.of.nokia.n8x0
Then just set the laptop browser to use 127.0.0.1:8080 as proxy and it would go through the N8x0.

Note1: The above example is with Privoxy running on the N8x0, that's why it says localhost:8118. Other configurations are possible.
Note2: The 'ssh' line is what you would use when logging in from a Linux laptop. You can do the equivalent (with tunneling and all) using 'putty' under Windows.

This really depends on the WiFi card in the laptop. The easiest solution is upgrading it to a better one 1) miniPCIe 2) PCMCIA 3) USB.

My USB one with ZD1211 (which also works on Windows and MacOS X) has a big antenna and is much better than the on-board IWL3945. However, the IWL3945 is pretty good, and the NIT is inbetween the 2. Newer WLAN cards have even 3 antennas.

These ZyDAS cards go for about 10 EUR or USD. They're cheap, and you can detach them easily. You won't be able to use them as AP though. For that, Atheros (MadWifi) is recommended.

ironically it seems the better the laptop the more metal in it, which screens wifi better. check if your wifi adaptor has onboard antenna or has flying leads to an antenna in the screen, might be possible to improve things somewhat if you're brave.

otherwise, yes, use your tablet as a gateway. enable IP forwarding and use iptables masquerading to hide the laptop behind. you could link laptop to tablet with usb networking or bluetooth PAN.