Airport and ethernet bridge on Mac Mini (Late 2010)

Question

Airport and ethernet bridge on Mac Mini (Late 2010)

Hello fellow mac users,

I was wondering if it were at all possible to bridge the airport and Ethernet port on a mac mini?

What i am trying to achieve here is use my mac mini to pick up my WIFI from my study for all things internet related as per normal. Then i want to plug the Ethernet port into a small hub to which i would connect my Smagung TV and Blu-ray player so they can be controlled via the remote app on my iphone and see another computer runny samsung's anyshare program.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Justin

Message was edited by: Justin Arthur

Macbook Pro 2.8 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 3, 2010 11:46 AM

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Answer 1

Dah•veed

Level 9

66,487 points

Aug 4, 2010 10:08 AM in response to Justin Arthur

The solution is to manually configure the other device connected by Ethernet and to make sure that you are using the correct routing addresses.

You will need two pieces of information to manually configure the other device; the IP address for the Ethernet port while your Mac is using a wireless Airport connection, and the IP address of your LAN's gateway (router).

You can easily get the Ethernet port's IP by using Terminal (Apps/Utilities). Enter ifconfig en0 (that is a zero, not a capital o). Look for the IP next to inet. To get your gateway's IP go to Sys Prefs/Network/Airport/Advanced/TCP/IP.

So as an example my Ethernet's IP when I am using an Airport connection is 192.168.2.1, while my gateway's IP is 192.168.1.1.

First, configure the Sharing settings on your Mac in Sys Prefs/Sharing to share your internet connection from your Airport connection to computers/devices using an Ethernet connection. Next configure the other device manually using the IP addresses you retrieved above; (In this example I use the information from my Mac)
1. The IP Address for the device is the Ethernet port's IP + 1; (example 192.168.2.2)
2. Use 255.255.255.0 for Subnet Mask.
3. Set Router to the IP of your Ethernet port; 192.168.2.1.
4. The Primary DNS Server and the Secondary DNS Server is the IP address of the gateway; (example 192.168.1.1)

If you use a hub then everything stays the same except Step 1. You will need separate IP's for each device, so that would be the Ethernet port's IP + 1; + 2 ; + 3; etc. for however many devices you connect through the hub. (example 192.168.2.2; 192.168.2.3; 192.168.2.4; etc.)

Dah•veed

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Answer 2

Nov 7, 2010 10:17 AM in response to Dah•veed

Can I add a question to this one?
I have a MacMini and a MacBook. the MacBook is faster but will not hold an Airport connection to my Time Capsule. The MacMini, on the other hand, locks into the Airport and hold sure.
Now, can I piggyback my MacBook onto my MacMini? ie Can I use my MacMini to connect to Airport and my ISP and then use an ethernet connection to my MacBook so that my MacBook can access the internet through the MacMini's Airport connection?
Am I trying to be too clever??

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