Shared iTunes on an ad-hoc WiFi network

September 2, 2005 2:50 AM

Can you share iTunes Music Libraries over an ad-hoc (computer to computer) network?

OK, so I'm providing the music for a party and a large proportion of the music I want to use is stored on my eMac. However, I don't want to have my Mac 'on show' at the party. What I thought I could do is take my old Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop (with Netgear WG511 card and iTunes) along, and have my Mac in a different room serving the tunes. This all works perfectly when I'm connected to a wireless base station, but not when the network is set up 'ad-hoc' - iTunes simply doesn't discover the library of my eMac's iTunes.

Am I trying to do the impossible?

posted by samstarling to computers & internet (3 comments total)

No. One thing you can try is creating the ad hoc network differently. Turn off the ad-hoc network you've already created. Go to Sharing > Internet in System Preferences on the eMac, and set it to share from Ethernet to AirPort (it doesn't matter whether you actually have an internet connection or not). The laptop should then be able to connect and will be assigned an IP address (which doesn't happen during ad-hoc). That should work.
posted by cillit bang at 3:29 AM on September 2, 2005

OK, I got the Mac end all sorted out but my WG511 'Smart Wizard' found the access point created by the Mac and when I tried to connect perpetually said 'Scanning...'. Could my Mac be having trouble accepting the connection? I don't use the firewall on my Mac and I'm using WEP on the connection.
posted by samstarling at 3:59 AM on September 2, 2005

the ad-hoc solution may work if you hardcode IP addresses in.. just make sure they're in the same subnet. (i.e. use 10.0.0.1 for one machine, and 10.0.0.2 for the other, and set the subnet to 255.0.0.0 - that combination will put them in the same subnet.)

are you using XP on the laptop? if so you may have better luck using XP's built-in wireless client than using the one bundled with the card. or XP's built-in thing may be conflicting with the netgear one.
posted by mrg at 2:57 PM on September 2, 2005