Networking – Create private network from public wifi

private-networkroutersubnetwireless-networking

My question is similar to this one, which was never answered. I live in an old apartment building that is not wired for internet access, and therefore pay a monthly fee to access an XFINITY® WiFi by Comcast hotspot, a signal for which I can connect to from my room. I would like to create a private WiFi network in my apartment using the XFINITY hotspot as an internet source. On the face of it, this seems like it should be relatively easy to do. Yet I am unable to find a solution on the internet. (The term "subnet" comes up a lot, but I don't know how to create one of these.) Is there a particular WiFi router that I can buy that would allow me to do this in a relatively painless manner? My ideal solution would look like this:

Internet –>

XFINITY WiFi Hotspot –>

My Router –>

My Private Wifi Network –>

My Devices (e.g., Amazon Echo, Chromecast, Roku, XBox, laptops, iPad, Philips Hue, etc.)

Best Answer

Two possible solutions I can think of:

  1. Windows 10 laptop acts as a router.

This is relatively simple to set up: connect to the XfinityWifi hotspot from a laptop (or desktop, doesn't really matter) and enable the Mobile Hotspot option found in Settings.

Image shows mobile hotspot configuration page in Windows 10

  1. DD-WRT in client mode

Basically in this mode the router connects wirelessly to the XfinityWifi hotspot and broadcasts a signal. I'm not really well versed on how to set this up, but I can point you to this article on "Client Mode" on the DD-WRT wiki and this article on connecting/broadcasting more than one Wi-Fi network at a time.

In the past I have tried using Wi-Fi extenders (for example, something like this) but they just connect the computers directly through to the XfinityWifi hotspot and doesn't create a network. This might be what you're looking for though.

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