How to connect two laptops via Wireless LAN to play multiplayer games ?

The process I am mentioning here is for Windows 7 Operating System only. For XP and and Vista the process will partially be similar. The process mentioned here is for establishing Wireless LAN connection between two Laptops  which got Win7 installed.  With this connection  you can play multiplayer games ,  share files etc.  We will be using adhoc connection. 

Connectivity between two systems without using access points such as a switch/router is called as "adhoc" connection. In basic you don’t need any extra hardware.

Here one laptop will act as an access point while the other connects itself to that access point and vice versa. When playing multiplayer games one laptop serve as a access point and in the mean while connects to other access point i.e to the other laptop. This is called bridge between two connections.

Now get back to the steps for doing it in real.

Following are the steps which should be performed serially :-

Step 1:

First we setup one laptop as access point 

Open Control panel then go to Network and sharing center

Click on "Setup a new connection or network"

Step 2:

Scroll down on the dialog box and Select "Setup a  wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network. Then click "Next"

Step 3:

In the next window, provide a name for the network and a security key for the network. Then click "Next", if required click on "enable Internet connection sharing" in the next window.

Click "Close" to finish the setup.

Step 4:

For setting up the IP address, again go to Control panel->Network and sharing center.

Click on the "Change Adapter Settings" link on the left panel.

Step 5:

Right click on your wireless network connection that should named as "Wireless Network Connection" (by default) and select "Properties". 

Select "Internet Protocol Version 4" and click on the "Configure" button.

Step 6: 

Fill the "IP address"and "Subnet mask" fields as below and then click "OK" to save the settings.

Now the access point is setup successfully.

Step 7: Connect the other laptop to the newly setup access point by using the usual procedure.(searching for wifi and connecting).

Then setup the IP address of this laptop to the 192.168.0.x format.

Now both laptops are in LAN. To play multiplayer games, just turn off the windows firewall temporarily.

For file sharing, the laptops can be accessed by their IP addresses or through the Network sharing center.