I do a lot of development that requires creating local networks on my machine in order to connect to them on my mobile devices. When you create a network, you disconnect from your existing network and lose internet access. Is there any way to programmatically create a network while still maintaining a second WiFi connection that can access the Internet?
As an aside, it’s possible on the iPhone – when an iPhone connects to a locally created network, it somehow detects that it’s not a real Internet connection and maintains its 3G connection while also being able to interact locally with the host computer.
No. It’s not a matter of the software; most wifi chipsets only support being associated with a single network at a time.
The iPhone is able to avoid this because its 3G connection is a separate network interface from the wifi connection. If you have another method of connecting your laptop to the Internet, though, such as wired Ethernet, you can use that to get the same effect.