Astrill Setup Manual:Share Astrill VPN with all your wireless devices
If you got Windows 7 you can easily share your Astrill VPN connection with all your wireless devices (iPhones, iPads, Androids, other PCs etc…) using virtual WiFi hotspot support in Windows. You don’t need to run Astrill on your router. In fact you don’t need a router at all.
You need to install Astrill on your Windows PC
1. Go to Start Menu and type cmd
2. Windows will find cmd.exe console program
3. Right click on it and choose “Run as administrator“:
Type the following commands into Windows console:
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Test key=password
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
We have used “Test” as new hotspot SSID, and password “password”. You should change these.
If everything went OK, the last line will show “The hosted network started”. In case you receive this:
The hosted network couldn't be started. The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation.
this means that your WiFi driver is outdated. The best is to use automatic update for the driver so Windows will try to find it on Windows Update. If Windows is not able to find newer driver, try to find a newer driver on manufacturer’s web site (Atheros, Intel, Realtek, etc…).
You can easily test if your WiFi card is supported using command
netsh wlan show drivers
If you see line:
Hosted network supported : Yes
it means your WiFi card will work.
When Hosted Networking is started successfully, we need to tell Windows to share Astrill VPN connection.
1. click on WiFi signal bars icon in your system tray (near the clock)
2. Click Open Network and Sharing Center
Click on Change adapter settings
If you see just a list view, the best is to switch your view to Tiles or Details. This way you will be able to identify network adapters easier:
We are looking for OpenVPN adapter. It will probably not have that name on your computer, but you will recognize it by “TAP-Win32 Adapter V9″
1. Right click on OpenVPN adapter
2. Select Properties
1. Click on Sharing tab
2. Check box “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection"
3. From the drop down box select virtual WiFi adapter – we have renamed it to Virtual AP, thus name on your computer will be different. However – you can easily find it on the previous screenshot – it has description “Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter”
4. Once finished, click on OK button.
The last step is to connect to Astrill VPN (OpenVPN mode of course). Once you are connected, OpenVPN adapter will change its state as well.
Now connect to network “Test” using password “password” from your wireless phones. All your devices connected to network “Test” will use Astrill VPN.
Unfortunately, if you restart your computer or put it into sleep, Windows will disable virtual Access Point. You will need to run just this command again:
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
There are a few programs which can automate all this and help you manage virtual hosted network much easier. Two such free program can be found here:
http://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/
The list of supported WiFi cards:
http://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Supported%20Devices