Internet Sharing stopped working

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Level 1

22 points

Internet Sharing stopped working

I used to be able to share and Internet connection from my 10.4 running G4 and the other computers on my small home network, now I'm not able to do this, I'm not sure when it stopped. I can ping the g4 from any other computer on the network and any other computer can be pinged from the g4. I can share files and so on the only thing that really seems to be having a problem is the sharing of the Internet connection. here are the details about the connection, I'm dialing up with an internal apple modem using ppp. I've set the Internet sharing to on over the Ethernet connection. The dns lookups appear to be working on the remote machine, for example If I try and ping and address (ping www.google.com) it discovers the IP address but fails the ping, it responds "PING www.l.google.com (66.102.7.104): 56 data bytes"
just like it does on the machine actually connected and then hangs there with a 100% packet loss. One last thing I've noticed is, If I boot to a different partition (I have a partition to boot from for system repairs and the like) sharing works fine, with the visible settings in the sharing and network preferences looking the same. Has anyone else seen anything like this and where might I look to see what's different between the to system installations.

Posted on Aug 18, 2005 12:01 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 30, 2005 1:19 PM in response to Dan Eldridge

I have exactly the same problem. File sharing works fine both thru an airport connection to a Wireless router, and a direct ethernet connection between the two computers. This happens in both 10.4.2 and 10.3.9. Any ideas?

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Answer 2

Oct 16, 2005 1:45 PM in response to David Whitehead

I've just had exactly the same thing happen to me. Until last week I'd had internet sharing up and working fine and suddenly it just stopped. File sharing still works. I'm running a Power Mac G4 with Tiger and trying to share to a Power Book wirelessly also on Tiger. It's odd because no settings have changed at all and as I say, it worked fine. Sometimes tiger had a habit of turning off internet sharing for some reason, but it's not that this time. Spooky.

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Answer 3

Henry B.

Level 9

78,731 points

Oct 16, 2005 1:52 PM in response to Dan Eldridge

To begin - make sure internet connection sharing is still running. It becomes disabled if you restart your Mac.

Also make sure the MacOS firewall, and any other firewall software you installed on the Mac, is disabled. If you want to keep any firewall "up" you will need to open ports in it corresponding to the internet services your sharing computers require (like port 80 for web access, 25 and 110 for sending and receiving email, 443 for secure https web site access).

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Answer 4

Oct 16, 2005 2:05 PM in response to Henry B.

Thanks for this Henry, I found that it was actually Little Snitch stopping the connection somehow. Thanks again.

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Answer 5

Henry B.

Level 9

78,731 points

Oct 16, 2005 2:09 PM in response to Michael Rummey

Indeed. Many people install firewall-type applications like "Little Snitch" and then forget about it... only to be left wondering at a later date why some aspect of their network doesn't work properly.

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Answer 6

Nov 26, 2005 11:14 AM in response to Dan Eldridge

We're having the same problem. Internet Sharing over FireWire is not working under Tiger 10.4 through 10.4.3. Using the same two PowerBooks, but having the one that's still on Mac OS X 10.3.9 share the internet, still works as expected.

I brought another computer over running 10.4.3 as a sort of control and that one also could neither share nor connect to shared internet over firewire when the computer hosting the internet was running Tiger.

The only way for us to get this working temporarily is to let the PowerBook running 10.3.9 share the internet to the computer running 10.4.3.

The symptoms are similar to those above: When tiger shares the internet, natd does launch and provides the other computer with a 192.168.2.x valid IP address. Apple File Sharing works just fine between the two computers. I can ping the computer attempting to share the internet with it's 192.168.2.1 address, but anything beyond that has 100% packet loss.

The computer expecting to have access to the internet shows all the signs of being connected, but it just isn't as proven by the unsuccessful pings outside the 192.168.x.x private network.

This seems to be a bug in Tiger. Does anyone else have an idea of how to get this working again?

PowerBook G4 667MHz Mac OS X (10.4.3)

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Answer 7

Nov 26, 2005 2:14 PM in response to ATPTourFan

I've been able to fix my problem.

I figured that on the software side, all is working correctly. So, I disconnected all peripherals from the PowerBooks attempting the sharing and shut them both down.

With everything still disconnected, I zapped the Parameter RAM (PRAM) on both units. I let both boot up normally. Then I turned on internet sharing of my Ethernet connection to share over FireWire. This was on the machine running Tiger 10.4.3. Then I simply connected the FireWire cable and it worked.

I can't break it either by sleeping, shutting down either machines, etc. It has definitely fixed my problem.

Since the PRAM zap resets all interfaces to zero by wiping any lingering effects from previous settings, it must have properly reset the Firewire PHY.

I would expect it to help anyone who has suddenly lost the ability to share over their Ethernet connection (if they are getting internet from AirPort, etc). The Ethernet PHY should also be reset.

You may need to reset your default monitor resolution after a PRAM zap.

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