How to use a Macbook to share a wireless connection that my Macbook Pro can not see

[Onkelskrue]

Hi Guys,

Any way to do this one, using, say the combined bluetooth/airport capabilities. Basically, I want to be able to wirelessly connect to my Macbook and use its wireless connection (as my Macbook Pro's wireless capabilities are vastly inferior).

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Lars

 

[AppleGuy08]

Theres gotta be a setting that is out of whack on your macbook pro. Theres no reason why your macbook would see the connection and your MBP would not. Make sure you have the airport turned on, check you router settings. I would actually suggest you just do a hard reset on your router then re-configure the WEP if you had it on there. Ive had a time when my ibook couldnt find the connection, then i did the reset of the router and it worked fine.

 

[Onkelskrue]

Theres gotta be a setting that is out of whack on your macbook pro. Theres no reason why your macbook would see the connection and your MBP would not. Make sure you have the airport turned on, check you router settings. I would actually suggest you just do a hard reset on your router then re-configure the WEP if you had it on there. Ive had a time when my ibook couldnt find the connection, then i did the reset of the router and it worked fine.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that my girlfriend and I are out travelling and consistently, her Macbook is getting/finding connections when my Macbook Pro turns up zip. Since we are talking free connections, I can't really get to check how things are set up.

I have to admit I am surprised too - not sure why I paid about twice the price for mine! :- (

Thoughts?

Onkelskrue

 

[AppleGuy08]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that my girlfriend and I are out travelling and consistently, her Macbook is getting/finding connections when my Macbook Pro turns up zip. Since we are talking free connections, I can't really get to check how things are set up.

I have to admit I am surprised too - not sure why I paid about twice the price for mine! :- (

Thoughts?

Onkelskrue

Hell..you paid alot for it. Its very possible that you could have a bum airport card. Id take it into an apple store and have them take a look @ it. Thatd be your best bet considering that the computer is still in warranty.

 

[twentyone]

My friend and I had the same experience this summer. I could see the neighbor's wireless network and get about 30-40% signal strength and he couldn't even see it. We tried sitting side-by-side and him on the side of the room closer to the neighbor's house.

He's got the MacBook Pro and I've got the MacBook. Someone did say that it could be that the airport in the MBP is surrounded by aluminum, whereas it's just plastic in the MacBook.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

There is a way to share your internet access via your Airport Card.

But you cannot do it when you are receiving internet on the Airport Card. The sharing only works when you are using an ethernet cable for internet access and then go to System Preference>Sharing>Internet. Set the preferences there and hit start sharing.

An option you could do though is to use an ethernet cable to connect the two Macs and share your internet via ethernet port. Therefore the MB could receive a wireless connection and then share that connection via the ethernet cable. Give that a shot, let me know if it works cause I'm curious.

 

[savar]

He's got the MacBook Pro and I've got the MacBook. Someone did say that it could be that the airport in the MBP is surrounded by aluminum, whereas it's just plastic in the MacBook.

I would like to think that Apple would have anticipated the case being a Faraday cage, but I don't know how they worked around it -- maybe they didn't?

Anyway, back on topic: I'm pretty sure you can't do what you're thinking of. You basically want to bridge the wireless network so that your MacBook can act as a repeater to the MacBook Pro. While this is possible in theory, support for that mode would have to be written into the driver, and my experience with Airport cards is that the drivers are very limited. With two wireless cards in the MB you could probably do it, though. Of course, if you're going to buy an external card just get one for the MBP.