[chasg]

Hi All, hope I've got the right forum (could be laptops, could be iphone, could be networking. Apologies if this is in the wrong place).

Summary: I'd like to connect my iPhone to an ad-hoc network on my Macbook Pro.

I've got a couple of apps on my iPhone that will control various things on my laptop and digital camera. In order for them to work, I've got to connect the iPhone to the same wifi network as the laptop, _or_ connect to an ad-hoc network set up on the laptop.

I can successfully use these two apps when the iPhone and the laptop are both connected to a wifi network, but I'm struggling to connect the iPhone to the laptop when I've created a network on the laptop.

Steps I'm taking:
1) Laptop Airport menu: Create Network
2) give the network a name, a channel (Automatic), and no password (for the sake of simplicity). I get a nice, helpful, icon in the Airport menu (gray with a little fat mac inside)
3) go to the iPhone, choose the network I've just created...aaannnd, the iPhone times out while waiting to connect to the network.

A quick look at the Network panel in System Prefs shows the laptop has a self-assigned IP address, and quite a broad subnet (255.255.0.0). The laptop is running OSX 10.5.8, the iPhone OS 3.1.

Can anyone give me any guidance?

Thanks in advance,

Chas

[Big Mac]

I don't have much helpful guidance, but I've created ad hoc networks like that for my touch to connect to and have always been able to connect.

[shdwghst457]

just created an ad hoc just to see what my IP settings would say, in my house i use DHCP with manual ip address, and that information stayed the same when creating a network. try creating a new location, then creating the ad hoc network?

[QSilver]

This thread over at TUAW has step-by-step instructions:

Mac 101: Create a wireless network between Mac and iPhone

[chasg]

Great info everyone, many thanks! I'll try out the "new location" suggestion, and I'll also head over to TUAW to see what they say.

I managed to have a little time with another macbook yesterday, and a quick ad-hoc setup worked perfectly right away (just as it's supposed to), so there has to be something about the way I've got my own laptop set up that is causing the problem).

Cheers!

Chas

[ghporter]

This is a networking issue, rather than a hardware specific issue. Not that I knew that initially, but it makes sense that an iPhone can join an ad hoc network just like any other network. Moving to Networking...

[chasg]

yeah, I wasn't sure which forum the question belonged in (I chose Laptops because it's only on my laptop that the problem manifests).

Ok, welcome to Networking! (anybody here have any insights?)

Cheers!

Chas