Reverse Tether using Bluetooth PAN to iOS Devices

Same issues. No one seems to be answering from Apple. I follow the setup (internet sharing etc) and get as far as having a PAN Network Sevice, but when i go into it it shows a greyed out "No PAN Devices Found" even though my new ipod touch is connected. Ive been ggoling all morning to no avail. I never tried this with Snow Leopard so i dont know if this is a Lion issue. To be clear: tyring to have my ipod use the WIFI on the MB AIr or MB Pro.

I wrote an article about this a few weeks ago: http://kiskeyix.org/articles/552

The funny thing is that I upgraded to Lion and my device would connect to my Mac and I would be able to use arping to send/receive layer2 broadcasts, but no layer 3 traffic would go through! (icmp, tcp, udp, etc...). Essentially, the device sends the information to the Mac, but the Mac never returns (forward) the traffic back to the system. This is extremely odd, especially since my firewall is completely off on both devices.

So I took the "let's start from scratch" approach and removed the PAN device as well as all the Bluetooth devices I had paired with the system. Reboot. And tried to add the "share my network with bluetooth" setting. To my surprise this option is missing on the Bluetooth control panel! Searching online yields no results either.

Now I'm looking for a way to do it manually from the command line. Anybody has an idea?

I was able to get the PAN interface back by simply doing:

1. remove all bluetooth devices and turn it off

2. reboot

3. share my wifi connection (Lion) with Ethernet (only)

4. make the mac discoverable and turn on bluetooth

5. on the other device initiate the pairing (so it finds the Mac as a computer that shares its network)

6. the Network control panel shows PAN now. back to internet sharing enable the PAN interface

After that I get the same result, arping the IP of the Mac shows the Mac receives the information but does not reply. Tried a combination of firewall on and off, etc...

In Linux you could simply tell the kernel to forward packets, but I do not know how to do this on the Mac. Anybody?

I was able to get the PAN interface but Internet Sharing does not work.

OSX Lion, No firewalls, Share connection from Ethernet to computers using Bluetooth PAN, Internet Sharing On, but from iPad I cannot surf the web.

Anyone resolved this issue?

This is definitely a bug from Lion. You can activate Internet Sharing to Bluetooth PAN devices.... you wont get packets forwarded to the ipad.

I could do it on Leopard but can't make it work on Lion. Both iPad 1 and 2 don't work now. So I guess Apple needs to fix this bug on Lion.

I have the same problem, anyone of you solved this issue?

Same problem here - trying to do exactly what AppleSJ511606 wants to do....

I purchased an external wifi signal booster from bearextender.com - to use with my MacBook Air as the hotel I frequent in Mexico has a very weak WiFi signal. The antenna solves the WiFi problem for my MBA, but there are apps and what not that I want to use on my iphone - and Id like to share that boosted signal that my MBA is now receiving.

Ive been looking for hours on how to accomplish this - no luck. Looks like we've all hit a dead end as of now?

Same problem here, Montepulciano, Italy - trying to do the same.

PAN option disappeared. The suggested workaround don't worked for me. Only available options: wifi (the actual connection), ethernet, DUN Bluetooth and Firewire. Then VPN, PPPoE and 4 to 6. A complete weekend only for understanding that there is some bug there.

Came up with this same idea today, disapponted I couldn't get it to work. I can get the Wifi sharing up and going, and that works, but my network engineering team disapproves of individual Wifi networks "cluttering up" their airwaves. I do notice that my Late-2011 MacBook Pro only supports Bluetooth 2.1, but it looks like there's some hot-shot MacBook Air owners with 4.0 with the same problems. This seems technically feasable, but it's frustrating that it doesn't work.

It is very frustrating that this isn't working. As an alternative, is there any way to share the network over the USB cable to the iOS devices? And I don't suppose there's a way to share a WiFi network via another WiFi network. I once had a Windows laptop that let me do that.

The new update 10.7.3 has fixed this issue. Wonderful!

Is there any chance you can post step-by-step instructions as to how you got this to work. I must be doing things in the wrong order. I can't even get devices to pair now. Thanks in advance. ~chuck

Can't pair your iPad with the Mac? That sounds like there are other issues.

I could pair it with my Macbook very easily even before 10.7.3 update, just couldn't get Internet connection through BT.

What error message you got when you tried to pair them? Did you turn on the Bluetooth and make it discoverable?

Once you turn on the BT, you should go to Network in System Preference and add Interface "Bluetooth PAN" service. Wait a while and it will show you the IP address of the PAN.

And then you go to Sharing and check the Internet Sharing and select Share your connection from Ethernet and To computers using Bluetooth PAN. You should see a double circle on your iPad's top right hand corner.

The original question of this thread was to reverse tether using a wifi connection. Its already known that this can be accomplished when the Internet source is Ethernet. We want to know how to do this when the Internet source is wifi.