WiFi is pretty ubiquitous these days, with devices that support WiFi and places that offer Internet over WiFi as a service, mushrooming everywhere.
At least that’s what I used to think till about last month when I found myself in a hotel with no WiFi and just one Ethernet port that I was expected to share with two of my friends. Now, we could all do what others at the venue were doing. Sharing the Ethernet port, finish up our work in a given time and hand over the port to the next in line.
Or we could just make one of the computers act as a WiFi hotspot and let the other PCs access the Internet through the first one.
It isn’t too difficult to guess the option that we chose, and for our little setup we decided to use my Mac as the router, since the setup was the easiest on the Mac.
In this post today, I’m going to detail the steps that are needed to share the Internet connection on a Mac effectively turning your Mac into a WiFi router.
Setting up custom network
First of all, you need to create a network of all the computers that are going to share the connection. In networking terms, this is called an adhoc network.
The good thing is that you don’t need to do anything special to create an adhoc network in OS X. OS X will prompt you when it needs to create one, if you’re using the Airport Card (WiFi) for sharing.
To enable Internet Sharing, open System Preferences (Apple -> System Preferences) and click Sharing.
Select Internet Sharing from the list of Services.
From the Drop down menu, select the Interface which is connected to the Internet source and from the list below it, select the interface which you want to share with the other computers. In my case, that was the Ethernet and the Airport (WiFi), respectively.
The third and final step is to create an adhoc network which the other computers can connect to.
Click on Airport Options.
OS X will then prompt you to type in a name for the new network.
Unless you want all the freeloaders in the neighborhood to piggyback on your network, I’d suggest that you select the Enable Encryption option and provide a password for the network.
That’ all there is to it. Click Ok and OS X will enable Internet Sharing on your Mac, from the Ethernet to the Airport Interface.
The only thing left now is to search for a new networks in all the other computers that you want to connect, and our adhoc network should show up in the list. Select and join this network.
All the client machines should now be able to browse the Internet as if they’re directly connected to the Internet over WiFi.
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Thanks for the post, very helpful while in a hotel room with only one Ethernet cable.
thanks works great
airport is on the fritz. fine for laptop but disastrous for ipod touch. thanks for the tip.
thanks a lottt…i was serching for this frm long agooo…u rock—-
Sper Thanks
Under the ” to Computers Using” it doesn’t come up with airport?? How do i put that in?
Did you make sure that your airport is on? If it is not, it won’t show up in the list.
Dude thank god for this post. Really helping me out in a hotel room with just ethernet and wanting to use my ipad wifi.
OH MY GOD IT S WORKING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU YOU JUST MADE MY DAY XDDD
And this will make it a WEP protected? Will I be able to use my Nintendo DS to access the internet through it?
Yes, you can.
WARNING! This no longer works with OSX lion, you need an active internet connection before it will create the hotspot, so if you want to transfer files while your out of the house, or stream a movie to your phone when you don’t have a wifi connection nearby then you cant! Also, it means i need an internet connection to move spotify tracks to my iphone. Can you tell im annoyed with lion right now?Thanks APPLE, fix this!
There are still bugs with Lion. Bear with it for the moment. I believe Apple will issue an update soon.
its not a bug its a feature in apple talk.
i have found many unfavorable features including NAS incompatibility, changing scrolling direction in the mouse, etc that has kept me from downgrading all my macs to Lion
IKR! I just discovered how to configure the hotspot in My Macbook yesterday and was able to access my iPhone remotely (Airport) and then I decided to upgrade to Mac OS – Lion… left it at home as it was downloading still… before I left to work. So excited to come home, now I just got back… realizing the Airport accessibility is gone w/ the new Mac OS – Lion! Waaaaa! (T_T)
GOOD NEWS! After 4hrs of researching I believe this helped me in a way…. http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_turn_macbook_into_wireless_hotel_wifi_hotspot.html …. But after creating a network (& a WEP network key format and in CHANNEL –11) on my Macbook (Mac OS X — Lion/10.7) after my iPhone recognized the network name I created, I typed in the WEP network key… I manually configured to my iPhone the of the IP Address, Subnet Mask, Router, & DNS server that I saw in my Ethernet Network Connection at the NETWORK page in Systems Preferences of My Macbook! On my Macbook the ethernet connection I had was “using DHCP” … then on my iPhone it was also in (IP Address) DHCP, (Http proxy) AUTO… but! I looked on my phone now, I realized that I lost the wi-fi connection after I unplugged the USB cable connection between my iPhone & my Macbook! hahaha! LOL! All those things happened while I was charging my iPhone to my Macbook using a the USB cable cord…. So bottom-line, it still isn’t WIRELESS!!! Dang! But I’m pretty sure APPLE will fix this issue! I just hope ASAP! ^_^
how make it working again afer turning the Mac Off and On again, withoing doing the wole thin agin ?
what if there is no ethernet cable or modem?
Too bad for you. You will need a source to connect to the Internet before you can share it with others.
I used this method for my droid 3 and it worked awesome for a day now my phone says its connected to my imac and obtains ip address but then web pages wont load or are really slow. What do i need to do ??
Are you using Lion or Snow leopard. There seem to be an issue with Lion.
Lion osx internet sharing bug:
SOLVED! —–> All you have to do, when creating network, is so CHANGE the channel. As long as its not on channel “11″ (default) it works as smooth as it did with any previous osx. Weird? Yes! Works? Yes!
Don’t forget to activate internet sharing in Sys Pref
If its not working, try by following these steps.
Step by step:
Turn your mac into a wireless router for your iPhone (or other device)
1/2: Enable Internet Sharing:
- open System Preferences
- Select “sharing” from Internet&wireless menu
- In the left column, almost at the bottom, make sure “internet sharing” is selected.
- On the right. next to “share your connection from” choose the connection the MAC has with the internet (wireless:wifi cable:ethernet)- Where it says, “To computers using” select “Wifi” (or “Airport”) - Here you’re done. exit system preferences2/2 Creating networkNow you need to create a wifi network for you iPhone to find and connect to- click on your wifi icon, in status bar (on top of the screen)- select “Create Network…” (if this option doesn’t show, try turning wifi on/off. Now it should be there- Choose a name for this particular connection (this is just what shows when looking for available wifi networks on your iPhone (i.e. “MacbookRouter” or whatever”-Change the channel from 11 to 3! (or any other number, along as its not 11- Add a password. Really important to do. the 40 encrypt needs a 5 letter or 10 digit password. the 128- need a13 letter or 26 digit. I would always suggest to go for the 128-bit one. Because its more secure and once you’ve entered the password once, it will remember your device anyway.- click “Create” and you’re doneNotice the wifi icon in the status bar now changed. It should be the same form, but grey, with a little white monitor in it (or whatever its supposed to be)Now, theres left to do, is take your iPhone and look for wifi spot. The name for this router (macboocrouter) should be selectable now. Enter the password you just made upNow, if you did everything correctly and god doesn’t hate you too much, you should have internet on your iPhone now. NOTICE that this connection does not always shows itself as you are used to (the umbrella shaped wifi logo on your phone. So the best way to check and make sure the connection is good, is to turn of Data and 3g on your phone. If you still have internet on your phone then you did everything right. Now enjoy the rewards of having to read all this text, haha.Enjoy!Mathew(I used a late 2008 MacBook Lion osx conn with ethernet, an iPhone 3gs (jailbroken 5.0)
Thanks.
thank you so much , i been try so hard to make my mac to be hotspot but no work , now is work very good thank you bro , so then if not in channel than i work very good .
what if you have a device that will not wirelessly connect to the internet and you are trying to create a hotspot using the wireless interent you receive on your macbook??
Are you referring to a LAN only device? It won’t work then in this case, at least not for the wifi method. You might be able to route the internet connection from your Mac to your device via LAN, but that is out of context for this article.
hai plz help me after doing all this i can enable my hotspot on my mac.when i’m trying to connect on Wondows XP it is connecting after that it is showing that limited connection b’coz it not getting ip from hotspot
is it possibile to do it with a plug to surf…coz i heard u need a cable internet connxn!!
Crazy problem! Any help? Thanks in advance!
I have a Macbook Pro (v 10.6.8) and Ideos, google, smart phone. I know, as the way it is described, how to create hotspot on my macbook. I have created it many times and that was connected and used by my smart phone as well as some of other friends smartphones, like htc android etc.
Recently, came to know that my our, me and my friend’s, mobiles are unable to connect the wifi created by THIS MAC. My mobile can use any other wifi available in university as well as other cafe’s etc.
I am trying to create the wifi network, the same way as before. However, I failed every times. As someone suggested, I changed the channel number from 11 to other numbers as well as to Automatic, but no good sign.
Your help and comments are valuable. Thank you!
Just to add, it is always saying the message either “Scanning” or “Obtaining IP address” and later failed and showing “Disconnected”.
Did you do any upgrade to your Mac recently, like upgrade to Lion?
Thanks Damien, for your response! However, I have not made any upgradation to Lion etc. I am using the same version. I surprise, if there is any change in policy, rule etc which stopping me to use the wifi.
Try changing the channel (as mentioned in the comment below) and see if it works.
I have already mentioned in my post that I have changed the channel number from 11 to different other numbers. But, no results.
My apology. If you never upgrade the OS, or did anything drastic to your machine, I would think that perhaps some software you installed have hinder the HotSpot sharing, or that you (or some software) have accidentally turned on the firewall or edited the sharing permission, or worst still, there is a hardware failure.
Thank you for your comments and suggesting the possible problems. I am not sure, I will keep trying to find some solutions. I changed the firewall sharing but no change in the results. I am not sure about any new software being downloaded or anything else. I would post if I can find the actual problem.
take an airport express with you, much easier
thank you very much.
before that i was using internet on my nokia through connectifier on windows.
now i can use it on mac. thanks once again