[spaces]

I am a new MacNN poster, so I hope I'm not asking an old tired question. I did review a bunch of old posts before I posted this.
A friend told me that there is some way that I can use my new iMac (running Jaguar) as a base station to connect to the internet with my Ti Powerbook without buying/installing an Airport base station. My iMac connects to the internet via a cable modem. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks for your help.

[seanyepez]

Easy. Use the Internet connection sharing built-in by opening System Preferences and clicking either Sharing or AirPort. I don't have a Mac in front of me at the moment, but it is very possible. I recommend it wholeheartedly; iMacs have very good AirPort reception.

[OldManMac]

On your iMac, go to System Preferences, Sharing, Internet, and click on, Start, to turn on internet sharing from it's ethernet port. Also click on, Share your internet connection with other computers.

On your TiBook, go to System Preferences, Network, Configure, and select, Using DHCP. Then, in the same window, click on the Airport tab, and click on, join network with best signal, and click on, Show airport in status bar. Click on, Apply Now, at lower right corner. Then, in your Applications folder, open Internet Connect, select Airport, and you should be done.

[vmarks]

Hi, this isn't a powerbook or iMac specific question. It's a networking qustion. I'm going to move it to the ntworking forum. Thanks!

[seanyepez]

It acts just like a regular AirPort base station. It's even got better range than the first-generation ones.

[justinkim]

You should be aware that using a mac as a base station doesn't get you all the features of a regular base station.

The big ones are (IMHO):
1) If you want to redirect any ports, you'll have to manually kill the natd process and start another maually
2) You can't restrict access by MAC address

[spaces]

Sorry about posting to the wrong forum. Thanks to all for the advice, and in particular, the very specific how-to advice. It is very much appreciated. I still don't really understand and therefore don't know what to make of the following comments:

1) If you want to redirect any ports, you'll have to manually kill the natd process and start another maually
2) You can't restrict access by MAC address

Thanks again!

[justinkim]

Originally posted by spaces:

1) If you want to redirect any ports, you'll have to manually kill the natd process and start another maually

Say you want to run a web server on a machine on your LAN other than the base station machine. Because the server isn't directly on the Internet, you need a way to redirect traffic that comes into the base station from your ISP to the web server. You do this by setting up rules on your base station that instructs it to forward any http traffic to the webserver machine.

This goes for more than just webservers. You can also forward POP/IMAP/SMTP (email) traffic, remote login, etc...

If you want to do this with the software base station, you have to go into the command line, kill the process that does the forwarding/address translation (natd) and start your own. It's not that hard, but is a bit of a pain. Internet sharing also seems to periodically reset the process (every week or so I this seems to happen to me), so you have to keep an eye on things.

2) You can't restrict access by MAC address

Your airport card (and ethernet interface) has a unique address called its MAC address. You can set up the hardware base station to only allow specific MAC addresses to connect. This gives you an added level of security, allowing you to specify which computers can connect to your wireless network. The software base station doesn't do this (or at least I haven't found the correct button to set it up).

[rlorenc]

Originally posted by spaces:
I am a new MacNN poster, so I hope I'm not asking an old tired question. I did review a bunch of old posts before I posted this.
A friend told me that there is some way that I can use my new iMac (running Jaguar) as a base station to connect to the internet with my Ti Powerbook without buying/installing an Airport base station. My iMac connects to the internet via a cable modem. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks for your help.

I was having a little trouble getting the internet on a machine that was connecting to the network using Airport through a PMG4 running the software base station. To allow the PB to pick up the right information to get internet access, all I did was diable the firewall in the sharing tab on my PMG4. Works like a charm...