Internet connection sharing broken
I am about at my wits end trying to troubleshoot the Internet Connection Sharing feature on my Macbook Pro. The best description I can give for it is "flakey". Configuring it and turning it on is pretty simple and it has worked intermittently in the past but now it's pretty much broken. I'm attempting to share my wired ethernet connection over WiFi to devices like an iPad, Windows XP laptop and Android phone. The symptoms are so bizarre but I hope maybe someone can see a common thread and help me find the culprit.
Here goes.
The Windows XP laptop simply will not connect to the Macbook no matter what. The wireless network shows up in the network list in XP but when I attempt to connect I simply get an error that it was unable to connect and maybe the access point moved out of range. However, when the AP list refreshes there is the Macbook again with full signal strength.
The iPad connects to the ICS access point but then most of the time it has no Internet connectivity. Sometimes I can get pages to load partially or sometimes even fully but this is rare and most of the time I get timeout messages from the iPad. IP addresses listed in the iPad networks settings are typical for Macbook ICS - 10.0.2.15 for the iPad and 10.0.2.1 for DNS and Router. I have a ping application on the iPad and it always works flawlessly pinging anything on the Internet that will respond to ICMP echos. Even attempting to ping something like www.novell.com the address lookup works fine resolving the name to an IP although they don't respond to pings.
The Android phone is somewhere between the two above. It connects to the ICS access point on the Macbook but Internet connectivity completely fails. I ran tcpdump on the Macbook and when loading a web page I see the DNS lookup, I see the initial syn, syn/ack, ack as well as a bit of HTTP maybe 4-6 packets however after that the conversation just seems to stop.
It seems like the Macbook is just having issues forwarding either the requests or responses - of course as I mentioned ping works great so apparently it has no problems with that. Plus what's up with XP? It can't get to first base.
Macbook firewall is off (allow all incoming)
I think I've tried everything simple but I'm open to any suggestions on what to try next. Need an Internet Connection Sharing guru!
Here goes.
The Windows XP laptop simply will not connect to the Macbook no matter what. The wireless network shows up in the network list in XP but when I attempt to connect I simply get an error that it was unable to connect and maybe the access point moved out of range. However, when the AP list refreshes there is the Macbook again with full signal strength.
The iPad connects to the ICS access point but then most of the time it has no Internet connectivity. Sometimes I can get pages to load partially or sometimes even fully but this is rare and most of the time I get timeout messages from the iPad. IP addresses listed in the iPad networks settings are typical for Macbook ICS - 10.0.2.15 for the iPad and 10.0.2.1 for DNS and Router. I have a ping application on the iPad and it always works flawlessly pinging anything on the Internet that will respond to ICMP echos. Even attempting to ping something like www.novell.com the address lookup works fine resolving the name to an IP although they don't respond to pings.
The Android phone is somewhere between the two above. It connects to the ICS access point on the Macbook but Internet connectivity completely fails. I ran tcpdump on the Macbook and when loading a web page I see the DNS lookup, I see the initial syn, syn/ack, ack as well as a bit of HTTP maybe 4-6 packets however after that the conversation just seems to stop.
It seems like the Macbook is just having issues forwarding either the requests or responses - of course as I mentioned ping works great so apparently it has no problems with that. Plus what's up with XP? It can't get to first base.
Macbook firewall is off (allow all incoming)
I think I've tried everything simple but I'm open to any suggestions on what to try next. Need an Internet Connection Sharing guru!
MBP 15 inch 2009, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
