[CaseCom]

I just set up my home AirPort network, and I'm having trouble figuring something out. Please help!

I have two Macs: an iMac DV 400 and a new 12-inch PowerBook with an AirPort Extreme card. The iMac has no Airport card, but the AirPort Extreme Base Station sits right next to it so I connected it via Ethernet.

I have dial-up Internet access. Phone line goes into the AEBS, Ethernet line goes into the iMac. I set up the AEBS wirelessly using the PowerBook. Great. The iMac is able to see the AEBS via Ethernet. Great.

My problem is this: How do I use the iMac to tell the AEBS to dial in? The iMac shares the connection via Ethernet when the PowerBook is dialed in. But when the PowerBook is shut down and the dial-up connection is off, the iMac can't get to the Internet. The Internet Connect app shows just "Internal Modem"; there's no "Built-in Ethernet" option in the pop-up menu.

Will I have to buy an old-style AirPort card for the iMac even though the AEBS sits just 12 inches away from it? That would suck. I could manually unplug the phone line from the AEBS into the iMac whenever I want to take the iMac online. That would suck worse.

My slick home wireless network is turning out to be not so slick.

[CaseCom]

First I would like to personally thank all 15 people who viewed this post.

In case someone finds this while searching the archives, I got some answers over at Apple's discussion boards. As I feared, you can passively share an Internet connection over Ethernet, but you can't actively control it; you need an AirPort card for that.

There is a third-party utility that would do this, but I'm not that adventurous.

Another work-around would be to set the base station to automatically connect to the Internet, and make sure it's set to automatically disconnect after x minutes of inactivity.

But as for me, looks like I'm in the market for another AirPort card.