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Sometimes it’s useful to be able to share a wired internet connection from your Mac to other computers or devices wirelessly. Let’s say you want to browse the internet over WiFi with your iPhone at home, but you don’t want to buy a wireless router yet. Or maybe you have a game console with which you want to play games online, but again, don’t want to buy a router yet. Thankfully, there is an easy way to do this (and a hard way).

The Easy Way

First off, you need both a wired internet connection and a wireless card not in use on your Mac. Got that? Good. Launch System Preferences and click Sharing under the Internet & Network section.

Now, click on the Internet Sharing label. You have several options, but the most useful to most users is to set the drop down box for “Share your connection from:” as Ethernet.  Then check Airport directly underneath.

Next, we’ll set some security options. Click the Airport Options button. Here’s where you can set things like the network name and security preferences. Just give your network a name (I called mine MacBook) and, if desired, a password by checking “Enable WEP protection.” I’d recommend you use some form of security with a password unless you want strangers snooping around your network. 40-bit is a good choice, since it is supported by more devices—like gaming consoles—while still offering protection. The password you set for this is a bit limited; for 40-bit it has to be 5 characters in length (13 for 128-bit).

All that’s left to do is hit OK, check the box next to Internet Sharing, and click Start to begin sharing your connection.

For many devices, all you’ll need is the name and password for the network and it should be smooth sailing. But for others, it can be a bit more complicated. So, here comes…

The Hard Way (proceed at your own risk)

If you have a stubborn device that won’t connect automatically with a name and password, then some of its settings may need to be configured manually. You’ll have to do this to share a connection to most gaming consoles. I can say from personal experience that this is the case for both the Wii and PS3.

This might sound a bit scary, but don’t worry, it’s not so bad. Fire up the Terminal (it’s in the Utilities folder inside of Applications). Type (without quotes) “ifconfig en1” and hit return. Record the number following the first appearance of the word “inet” (mine is 10.0.2.1, yours likely is similar).  Now type “dig” into the Terminal and hit return. One of the last lines will start as “SERVER:” Record the number following this (don’t worry about anything after the #).

On the stubborn device, you’ll have to manually configure a wireless connection. Note that you do NOT want the device to auto obtain an IP address. We’ll set it ourselves. Fill in settings as follows. 

• SSID - the name of your Wireless Network.
• Password - the password you set for your Network, likely 5 characters in length.
• IP - take the first number you recorded before and change the last digit. I’ve found that I have fewer issues if I change it by a few digits. So, in my case, I took 10.0.2.1 and changed it to 10.0.2.17. The last digit may be between 0-256 as long as it’s different from the original.
• Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0.
• Default Router - this is the unchanged first number you recorded. In my case it was 10.0.2.1.
• Auto obtain DNS - no.
• Primary DNS - the second number you recorded from the dig output.
• Secondary DNS - 0.0.0.0.

And that’s it. Now that wasn’t quite that painful, was it?

This can be a great way to share a single wired connection with a number of devices. You may find after trying this that you might not need a router. Alternatively, you may find it useful to have this running in addition to a router, especially if you have numerous devices, some of which support wireless N and some that don’t. The one’s that don’t will slow down the network as a whole, but by running two networks, you can have one high speed and one slower network. If nothing else, it’s nice to be able to browse the internet over WiFi with the iPhone in bed.