

Network communication for the connected devices is limited to sending and receiving network packets between a connected device and the local computer hosting the wireless Hosted Network and among the connected devices themselves. Starting the wireless Hosted Network typically involves starting ICS in standalone mode to use the DHCPv4 server function to provide private IPv4 addresses for connected devices. A user or application is not able to directly start and stop standalone ICS through public ICS APIs or netsh commands. This is a special operation mode for ICS and is only made available through the wireless Hosted Network.

Only the DHCPv4 server function is operating when the ICS service is invoked. The ICS Service operates in one of the two possible modes: This section provides general recommendations to application developers on how to integrate wireless Hosted Network and ICS using the public wireless Hosted Network and ICS APIs. Wireless Hosted Network is closely tied to ICS to enable both the wireless personal area network (PAN) and the Internet sharing scenarios. We use the term ICS and SharedAccess interchangeably in this section, since Internet Connection Sharing is a major scenario for the wireless Hosted Network and the ICS term is better known to the user community. Strictly speaking, SharedAccess enables network sharing through a computer where the shared network access does not necessarily provide access to the Internet. Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) is a feature in Windows provided through the SharedAccess Service. A software-based wireless access point (AP) sometimes referred to as a SoftAP that uses a designated virtual wireless adapter.The virtualization of a physical wireless adapter into more than one virtual wireless adapter sometimes referred to as Virtual Wi-Fi.This feature implements two major functions: It is also supported on Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Wireless LAN Service installed. The Wireless Hosted Network is a new WLAN feature supported on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Use Wireless Hosted Network, Internet Connection Sharing
