using the commands below(win 8.1 professional):

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode = allow ssid=myWifiName key=myWifiPwd

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

In Windows 7, the commands will generate "Wireless Network Connection 2"(I think the reason is that there already exists a connection called WLAN. So it starts from number 2).

In Windows 8.1, the commands will generate "Local Area Connection* 12"(I could not figure out the reason why the number is 12 and what the asterisk means???).

I could not stop myself from thinking why the number starts from 12 and what the asterisk means? I could not get useful info from google. So I registered an account. Could you help me please ? thanks.

Windows makes several "simulated" network adapters for various purposes. For example, if you're on an IPv4-only network, but you want to connect to an IPv6 computer on the internet, Windows can create a simulated network adapter that tunnels the IPv6 traffic through your IPv4 network.

There are actually quite a few of these simulated network adapters.  Since they usually quietly take care of themselves, and they don't correspond to any actual network hardware that you (the end-user) can see or touch, Windows will hide them by default, to avoid clutter.

Now suppose Windows just started numbering all the adapters with the same naming scheme ("Ethernet 1", "Ethernet 2", "Ethernet 3", . . ., etc.).  Then by the time you actually install your actual NIC, it would probably get a name like "Ethernet 7".  But since Windows hides the first 6 network interfaces, you'd see a listing that only includes one NIC: "Ethernet 7".  And you'd probably say "stupid Windows doesn't know how to count."

So instead, we have two numbering schemes.  Real, physical NICs get numbered "Ethernet ###" (or "Wi-Fi ###", etc.) while all the hidden network adapters get "Local Area Connection* ###".  That way, the NICs that you see will be numbered starting from 1, even though there are a big pile of hidden network interfaces that were installed first.

What does the asterisk mean?  The asterisk used to be the signal that the NIC was a hidden NIC.  Older versions of Windows named all visible NICs "Local Area Connection ###", and hidden ones were distinguished by adding an extra asterisk.  These days, we try to avoid using nerdy jargon like "Local Area Connection" when talking to you, so we changed the naming pattern to "Ethernet".  But since hidden NICs don't matter, we kept their old naming pattern with the asterisk.

If you're curious, you can see all the network interfaces on your system with this PowerShell command:

Get-NetAdapter -IncludeHidden

(I'm the engineer that invented and implemented Windows's current NIC naming policies.)

• Proposed as answer by Roger luMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator 4 hours 55 minutes ago

Windows makes several "simulated" network adapters for various purposes. For example, if you're on an IPv4-only network, but you want to connect to an IPv6 computer on the internet, Windows can create a simulated network adapter that tunnels the IPv6 traffic through your IPv4 network.

There are actually quite a few of these simulated network adapters.  Since they usually quietly take care of themselves, and they don't correspond to any actual network hardware that you (the end-user) can see or touch, Windows will hide them by default, to avoid clutter.

Now suppose Windows just started numbering all the adapters with the same naming scheme ("Ethernet 1", "Ethernet 2", "Ethernet 3", . . ., etc.).  Then by the time you actually install your actual NIC, it would probably get a name like "Ethernet 7".  But since Windows hides the first 6 network interfaces, you'd see a listing that only includes one NIC: "Ethernet 7".  And you'd probably say "stupid Windows doesn't know how to count."

So instead, we have two numbering schemes.  Real, physical NICs get numbered "Ethernet ###" (or "Wi-Fi ###", etc.) while all the hidden network adapters get "Local Area Connection* ###".  That way, the NICs that you see will be numbered starting from 1, even though there are a big pile of hidden network interfaces that were installed first.

What does the asterisk mean?  The asterisk used to be the signal that the NIC was a hidden NIC.  Older versions of Windows named all visible NICs "Local Area Connection ###", and hidden ones were distinguished by adding an extra asterisk.  These days, we try to avoid using nerdy jargon like "Local Area Connection" when talking to you, so we changed the naming pattern to "Ethernet".  But since hidden NICs don't matter, we kept their old naming pattern with the asterisk.

If you're curious, you can see all the network interfaces on your system with this PowerShell command:

Get-NetAdapter -IncludeHidden

(I'm the engineer that invented and implemented Windows's current NIC naming policies.)

• Proposed as answer by Roger luMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Tuesday, March 25, 2014 5:55 AM

If you're curious, you can see all the network interfaces on your system with this PowerShell command:

Get-NetAdapter -IncludeHidden

@ Jeffrey

Coincidentally I found that command when trying to answer a related question yesterday but was puzzled that I was unable to see the same details (in particular the SSID) that

    netsh wlan sh ho

shows using the PS command you gave.

Not even this one appears to show a  SSID

(Get-NetAdapter -IncludeHidden)[-1] | fl *

So, I wasn't able to find a good Powershell alternative for netsh when it came to HostedNetwork.  Got any tips that way?  <eg>

(If this seems too off-topic here, I apologize but would appreciate any comments in the thread I referred to.)

 

TIA

The WLAN stack in Windows doesn't have much WMI integration, so there's little you can do from PowerShell. (Partly this is because PowerShell is more for IT pros, while WLAN is more of a home networking thing. Honestly, it's also partly a result of the varying cultures of different parts of our own engineering organization.)

On older versions of Windows, there were a few WMI classes like root\wmi\MSNdis_80211_ServiceSetIdentifier, but these were poorly-documented, rarely used, and sometimes didn't work right.  I believe the WLAN folks finally removed all those old WMI classes.

At this point, netsh.exe is the best built-in command-line frontend to WLAN.

(If you're comfortable with p-invoke, you can write your own PowerShell wrappers around WLANAPI.  And I wouldn't be surprised if somebody's already done this.)

(If you're comfortable with p-invoke, you can write your own PowerShell wrappers around WLANAPI.  And I wouldn't be surprised if somebody's already done this.)

That was the necessary keyword.  Thanks.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/scriptcenter/en-US/5654fe33-860f-4e9a-904a-80ff9e933f74/how-can-i-get-a-list-of-bssids-without-using-netsh?forum=winserverpowershell

(Microsoft search for
    p-invoke  wlan
)