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Mac-compatible Wi-Fi dongles?

S

suzerain

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 5, 2000
197
0
Beijing, China
I was looking around at WiiFi dongles (and actually bought one that claimed Mac compatibility, although when I got home the drivers were listed as only compatible up to OS X 10.6, and I was not able to get it to work).

Why do I want one? Well, I want to use Internet sharing to share a Wi-Fi connection, but you can't do that normally because the Mac needs to share the Internet on a different interface than it is receiving it. This would be useful for me when I am in places with metered Internet that charge per device (such as certain hotels in countries where the Internet is heavily metered/expensive), so that I can have only one device connected, but get the Internet on multiple devices.

Since all Macs have built-in Wi-Fi, this appears to be a market suppliers have abandoned.

Does anyone know of an OS X-compatible Wi-Fi USB dongle?
 
suzerain said:
I was looking around at WiiFi dongles (and actually bought one that claimed Mac compatibility, although when I got home the drivers were listed as only compatible up to OS X 10.6, and I was not able to get it to work).

Why do I want one? Well, I want to use Internet sharing to share a Wi-Fi connection, but you can't do that normally because the Mac needs to share the Internet on a different interface than it is receiving it. This would be useful for me when I am in places with metered Internet that charge per device (such as certain hotels in countries where the Internet is heavily metered/expensive), so that I can have only one device connected, but get the Internet on multiple devices.

Since all Macs have built-in Wi-Fi, this appears to be a market suppliers have abandoned.

Does anyone know of an OS X-compatible Wi-Fi USB dongle?
Click to expand...

I don't know how big this market really is. One would usually just have their 2nd device connect to the wifi. Like you said, there is that rare occasion when you're charged per device.

How about using a wired connection for the main one? Or maybe an Airport Express? That would be easier to connect and that's kind of what they're for, I think?

Sorry I couldn't help on the dongle part, just ideas to get around from using one.
 
I don't know anything about USB Wi-Fi adapters for Mac either, but another way around the issue (if you have Ethernet on your Macbook) is to use a Wi-Fi Bridge (sometimes called a "Gaming Adapter") to pick up the hotel wi-fi and bring it into your MacBook's Ethernet port. Then you can share it out from there with the MacBook's Wi-Fi.
 
Mac-compatible Wi-Fi dongles?

I've managed to find a few that worked

10.8 (mountain lion)
- edimax ew-772utn v2 (confirmed working on 10.8.3, 10.8.4, 10.8.5)
- d-link dwa-131 (didn't buy this one in the end - but most people on the net managed to get it working using the ra link driver)

10.4, 10.5
- dynamode WL-700N-MRT

I managed to get wifi sharing (from wireless to wireless) set up using the edimax model above on 10.8.5 (mountain lion) by enabling internet sharing FROM the edimax (showed up as wireless 8011.n device)
TO the internal wifi on the mac... when i chose that option, an option at the bottom of the box became clickable, allowing me to set up the name of the wireless network and security key, etc
 
Thanks for the helpful responses. Should solve the problem of being stuck at hotels with no wired access, and per device charges.
 
It's a bit backward, but you can share your macs wifi over to it's ethernet port. I use this on my mini to feed Internet to my Ethernet only TV. In theory, it wouldn't then be a big deal to plug any small base station into the Ethernet, creating a second/concurrent wifi.
 
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