In search of ... a way to connect to multiple wi-fi venues at a time

[barney]

Folk,

This is prolly not doable w/o some special hardware, but I have to ask.

At the moment, the cable modem for my system is bad - won't transmit - so I'm using a tethered cell phone for connectivity.  At the same time, I want/need to connect to a wi-fi router so that the other two (2) machines in the current config can communicate with the primary box.

Any time I try to access the router, I lose the cell connection, and vice versa.  I'd like to find some means to connect the primary to both the cell and the router (which does not have Internet connectivity, but works just fine as a local hotspot).

Anyone have any ideas?  Or is this just wishful thinking?

The cable modem issue will be resolved tomorrow, but if this happened once, it can happen again, and I'd like to be better prepared next time around.  The OS is currently Win7 Ultimate, 64-bit, with i7 Intel and six (6) Gig RAM.

[x16wda]

You can't run a cable from your primary box to the router temporarily?

Can you add a second wireless nic?  One radio can only talk to one network at a time.

[barney]

You can't run a cable from your primary box to the router temporarily?

Can you add a second wireless nic?  One radio can only talk to one network at a time.

-x16wda (May 25, 2014, 08:13 PM)

Had not thought of the cable/router thing - too concentrated upon wi-fi, I guess.

Also, remembering my signal days, one (1) radio can communicate with multiples if properly set up  .  Apparently my remembrances are dated in the digital environment  .  I was hoping for a similar configuration in a software environment.  Oh, well, I (and my ideas) seem to be as old and dated as my body  .  I'll check out the hard-wiring concept.  Since all boxes are laptop, a 2nd nic is not a possibility w/o external hardware  .

[40hz]

Not so much one radio as one interface per connection. Because the NIC binds itself to the protocol being used. You can bind/bridge multiple interfaces together into a unified connection. But you can't split a single interface between two simultaneous connections.

If you're really in a bind, you could always set up for an ad hoc wifi network, share the internet connection from the PC with the tethered cell phone, and forget about the bum router until you replace it.

However, 16wda's suggestion about hard cabling the primary box into the router makes the most sense.