The previous steps let you connect the various machines. However, to be able to fully use the network, you need to define an IP addressing for the network’s machines and set up a certain number of services (web server, shared files, internet connection sharing, etc.).
For this type of network, it is necessary to use a private IP address. There are address ranges reserved to that effect, in this case 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.255 will be sufficient (or 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.255 if you already have a local network with the previous addressing).
If one of the computers on the ad hoc network already has an internet access it wants to share with the network’s other computers, it is usually named 192.168.0.1 (or 192.168.1.1), but this is just a convention. The other machines will take addresses from the same address range: 192.168.0.2, etc.
To configure the machine, simply right-click the icon corresponding to the wireless network connection, then choose “properties“:
Then, in the list of protocols, select “Internet protocol (TCP/IP)” and click “Properties“:
Enter each machine’s IP address, making sure not to enter the same IP address twice, 255.255.255.0 as subnet mask and possibly the IP address of the machine sharing the internet access (default gateway, with the address 192.168.0.1 by convention).
In the fields concerning the DNS, enter the IP addresses of the name servers corresponding to the connected machine’s service provider. To find them out, you can just enter the following command for example (Start/Run) on the machine that’s connected to the internet:
cmd /k ipconfig /all
All that’s left is to test the connection between the machines on the ad hoc network.
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