How to share Internet between Macbook Pros

November 5, 2007 11:55 AM

Help me share my wired connection wirelessly on my Macbook Pro.

I know that I can share it from Sharing in System Preferences. I go to the Services tab first and put on Personal Web Sharing and Personal File Sharing, because I read on Lifehacker that those need to be on.

Then I went to the Internet tab and selected Built-in Ethernet as the source, and Airport in the list at the bottom, and clicked start.

When I connect to the network that I just created with the second Macbook Pro, the Internet connection is extremely unstable. It would work for about a minute and then stop working.

I need to share it this way with my bro cause the WRT54GL router we bought doesnt support PPPoA which is what my ISP uses, so if I dont get this to work, Id have to go find a router which DOES support PPPoA and spend more money.

Bonus point for anyone who can tell me if there are any good routers which support PPPoA

posted by althanis to computers & internet (3 answers total)

I am pretty sure that my airport at home is set up to use PPPoE / A.
posted by luriete at 12:04 PM on November 5, 2007

Personal File Sharing and Web Sharing don't need to be on to share your internet connection. What you've done in the Internet Sharing section should be sufficient. Does your brother have Interference Robustness enabled on his computer? Computer to computer networks tend to be flakier than computer to base station networks since you're dealing with two mobile devices.
posted by pmbuko at 1:01 PM on November 5, 2007

my initial thought was to install DD-WRT firmware on the linksys router but after doing some digging it seems that even that won't help your situation... i did find this in one of the ddwrt forums:

"Try calling your provider to see if they will reprovision you as PPPoE. I *highly* recommend this as it gives you the ability to extend your PPP session to any device you like."

maybe see if your ISP can help you out?
posted by hummercash at 8:24 PM on November 5, 2007