Bridging

[simontarr]

Hi all, I'm just wondering if anyone can help me out with a small(ish) problem I'm having.

I'm at university and have paid to have the internet in my room, however, only one computer can use the connection. Currently my iMac is connected via CAT5 but I want to be able to use my MacBook on the net as well (if you try attaching the MacBook it asks that I pay again- I'm assuming the network detects the MAC address of the machine and since both computers have different MACs it won't let me connect without paying)

So basically I want to know how to wirelessly bridge the connection from my iMac to my MacBook so I can share the connection.

Thanks for your time

 

[mkrishnan]

That's an interesting setup... I've never heard of that in the US. Actually I've never heard of it in the UK either....

Assuming this is consistent with your license (in other words, if you have difficulties with your uni for this, it's your own problem), here are some options....

1) If you're allowed to pay the fee once for a router, that would seem to be the most ideal solution. You might have to pay the fee again, though. How much is it?

2) You can share the ethernet connection over WiFi from the iMac, which is what you asked for: On the iMac, System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet -> Share your connection from built-in ethernet, to computers using Airport, configure the airport options as you wish, and then click start. The limitation of this is that I don't think you have access to all ports on the client computer (the macbook). It might not be able to use IM for instance....

3) I guess you could also easily spoof the iMac MAC onto the Macbook, but then they could not operate simultaneously on the network without getting confused.

 

[simontarr]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

It costs £36/year but I'm guessing it's for just one computer, not several. To be honest no one will find out, so I'm not too bothered- I just think it would have made more sense to pay for the connection to your room as a whole, regardless to the number of computers you have.