iPad to Win7 ad hoc does not work

[Phil999]

WiFi does not need internet connection. That is a wrong assumption based on some problems after the introduction of iOS 6, and it was quite popular.

If you have connection problems make sure to not to read stuff from September 2012. Many things written at that time where everybody was confused are simply wrong assumptions. Sometimes you just had to reboot the computer and everything was working normally.

I was also writing wrong things at that time, saying that ad-hoc is no more possible after iOS 6, but of course it always was. You just can't use a different subnet in the IP addresses anymore, that's all.

Remember to have your network card updated to the latest firmware. I even heard of one case from a network specialist where he had to downgrade (a router in this case).

[Joe Soap]

I was having very similar issues. From my understanding it has to do with iOS devices 'needing' an internet connection to properly connect over wifi, team this with the following (taken from Windows Help and Support):

ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) and ad hoc networks: If you share your internet connection on an ad hoc network, ICS will be diabled if:
- You disconnect from the ad hoc network
- You create a new ad hoc network without disconnecting from the ad hoc network for which you enabled ICS
- You log off and then log back on (without disconnecting from the ad hoc network)

And obviously it leaves us in a situation where if we do not follow the appropriate steps (pretty much amounting to recreating a new ad hoc network) everytime our iOS device disconnects from the network (which may occur frequently for legitimate reasons) things just are not going to work....

The first time I created an ad hoc network on my Windows 7 desktop, everything worked properly, subsequently I've never been able to reproduce these results...

My current solution is to use Connectify Hotspot (or similar) to make a wifi network on my Windows 7 desktop. With that I've been successful at connecting both my iPad2 and MBP to said network and was able to get a proper connection with the Lemur Daemon on both computers. With that said, I haven't gotten the appropriate responsiveness from said connections that I would desire, but that was using TouchOSC to control TotalMix FX on my Win7 PC (it would just sometimes take a while to respond, as if there was a network bottle neck) and I still have to delve deeper into using Lemur on said network.

Just to reinforce what Phil said here - the above post is full of misinformation (to put it politely).

One thing though Phil - it was ALWAYS correct practice to have your ad hoc network within the same subnet. Frankly I'm surprised anyone ever got it to work otherwise?

And because the page wrapped around I'll post this link again, this time with some explication.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... ology.html

That's free, and allows one to connect both an ad hoc network AND a WLAN (internet) connection simultaneously. NB: This is exactly the technology that Connectify and other apps leverage to acheive this trick and it's heavily dependent on your WiFi chipset. There's a list of supported hardware on the Intel site linked from that page.

As covered previously in other related posts on these connection issues, this ability can be set from the cmdline (netsh) too . . . it's basically enabling virtualisation of the network hardware. Yay! \o/ Moar vT-D pls!

Another fairly important one is to disable Bluetooth on your iDevice and computer as it's known to cause problems for WiFi.

[Phil999]

One thing though Phil - it was ALWAYS correct practice to have your ad hoc network within the same subnet. Frankly I'm surprised anyone ever got it to work otherwise

yes. It was a bit complicated. First I had everything on the same subnet, but couldn't connect for some reason. That was in the beginning where I had zero experience, January 2012. Then I tried Connectify and had my first success. Later I used the subnet that was automatically applied in dynamic IP mode, put that as static address, and it worked (maybe I updated the firmware in the mean time, I don't remember exactly). Leading me to the wrong assumption it had to be like this, a certain subnet for the LAN, and a different one for WiFi. Unfortunately nobody corrected this despite me posting all details in various forums (including this one), so I kept this error for months.

[Joe Soap]

One thing though Phil - it was ALWAYS correct practice to have your ad hoc network within the same subnet. Frankly I'm surprised anyone ever got it to work otherwise

yes. It was a bit complicated. First I had everything on the same subnet, but couldn't connect for some reason. That was in the beginning where I had zero experience, January 2012. Then I tried Connectify and had my first success. Later I used the subnet that was automatically applied in dynamic IP mode, put that as static address, and it worked (maybe I updated the firmware in the mean time, I don't remember exactly). Leading me to the wrong assumption it had to be like this, a certain subnet for the LAN, and a different one for WiFi. Unfortunately nobody corrected this despite me posting all details in various forums (including this one), so I kept this error for months.

The whole thing's a drag.

Just to clarify things for anyone reading though - you can have a different subnet for your ad hoc network and your WLAN (internet) - the important thing to note is that for connecting the iDevice to the computer in ad hoc that they both be on the same subnet.

[Macciza]

Hi All
Firstly I am not a network guru but . . .
Remember that your address is really two parts - IP address and subnet mask - they go together . .
Subnet masks define your sub networks network and host options and affect connectivity . ..
The 255s define what is the network part, and the 0's (or other numbers) define the host range

Just because two address are different in the 2nd or 3rd octets does not mean they are separate networks
So two addresses 169.254.9.252 and 192.254.193.18 may appear as separate subnets depending on subnet mask.
Using 255.255.0.0 will be fine as hosts in the 3rd and 4th octet are part of the same subnet
Using 255.255.255.0 will not be though because the network part is different
These numbers - the 255's define the network part and the others the hosts part
255.255.0.0 has over 65000 possible hosts - 255.255.255.0 only 254 . . .
It is even possible to split this even further via masking within the host octets
This can allow you to limit the number of possible hosts within a subnet

Of course DHCP makes it all far simpler by simply assigning addresses within appropriate ranges.

Also it is best to not worry about WLAN/internet connection when doing adhoc connection . . .
In fact it is best to be doing very little real network stuff whilst doing music stuff imho

hth
MM

PS Of course if you are writing a long forum reply and swapping network connections etc remember to switch back to your net network before trying to send your message . . .

[Phil999]

Macciza, are you trying to confuse us or help us?

Just joking, it is of course helpful, but one has to decipher a bit the information. And if we need more info, there's always wikipedia and other sources.

[Joe Soap]

Hi All
Firstly I am not a network guru but . . .
Remember that your address is really two parts - IP address and subnet mask - they go together . .
Subnet masks define your sub networks network and host options and affect connectivity . ..
The 255s define what is the network part, and the 0's (or other numbers) define the host range

Just because two address are different in the 2nd or 3rd octets does not mean they are separate networks
So two addresses 169.254.9.252 and 192.254.193.18 may appear as separate subnets depending on subnet mask.
Using 255.255.0.0 will be fine as hosts in the 3rd and 4th octet are part of the same subnet
Using 255.255.255.0 will not be though because the network part is different
These numbers - the 255's define the network part and the others the hosts part
255.255.0.0 has over 65000 possible hosts - 255.255.255.0 only 254 . . .
It is even possible to split this even further via masking within the host octets
This can allow you to limit the number of possible hosts within a subnet

Of course DHCP makes it all far simpler by simply assigning addresses within appropriate ranges.

Also it is best to not worry about WLAN/internet connection when doing adhoc connection . . .
In fact it is best to be doing very little real network stuff whilst doing music stuff imho

hth
MM

Nope, that won't confuse n00bs at all - not one bit.

PS Of course if you are writing a long forum reply and swapping network connections etc remember to switch back to your net network before trying to send your message . . .

Or trying to develop a Lemur template and access help / resources on the Web.