I think I need a wi-fi extender

[hairy...@yahoo.co.uk]

I own a caravan at a site which has internet. Because bandwidth is limited each caravan is allowed to register a maximum of two devices.
That's fine because I have one device (my laptop). However sometimes family or friends use the caravan (at different times) so they can't all log on as their device will be rejected.
I think I know what I need. I buy a Wi-fi Extender which will act as my second device. My guests then log on to the extender instead of directly to the internet.
I need to know that my chosen Extender will do this rather than merely acting as a booster in the usual way. However due to my lack of technical knowledge I can not tell when reading the blurb whether I am buying the right product.
It is no good asking the caravan site management as they have even less knowledge than I do.
What info do I need to avoid wasting my money?
TIA
Ragnar Hairybreeks

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2016 07:50:12 -0700 (PDT), hairy...@yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

How do they know how many devices you are using, and that they're in
your caravan rather than your neighbour's?

How do you register them? Do they assign you a logon ID?

How does the signal arrive? Is there a site-wide wifi that you have to
log onto?

You don't actually log onto the extender, and that doesn't log onto
the network - it's like a extension cable with a splitter. just
multiplexing the devices talking to it.

It's possible to create a virtual wireless router with Windows 7, but
I haven't tried this. There's a Windows component called Netsh which
can turn an old PC into a router, sharing the wireless card between
the outside network and your virtual network.

But I haven't done this.

I would guess that this old computer would log onto your site network.
You and your visitors would connect to this instead of the site
network, which would think there was only one computer.

Response times might be slow, as the effective wireless speed of the
old computer would be halved because it retransmits everything it
receives, plus whatever the processing time is.

My printers are connected to a wireless extender for historical
reasons - they used to be in a different room to the router, which has
a desktop, two networked storage boxes and a Vonage phone adapter
connected to it, using all four available Ethernet connections.

I could just as easily use an Ethernet switch, but I already had the
extender.

This web page describes how to use an old computer as a router.

<http://www.practicallynetworked.com/networking/create_a%20virtual_wireless_router_with_windows.htm>

I have to stress that I haven't done this myself.

What I _have_ done, is piggybacked two routers to debug a friend's
setup, which is a similar situation but not quite the same because my
broadband connection doesn't require me to log on - my provider
recognises who I am from the DSL modem's MAC ID - every
network-attached device has its own unique one.

The difference is that the old computer being used as a virtual router
would log onto the site network and everything would appear to come
from that.

There are a couple of gotchas, but we can cross that bridge if and
when we get there.