Mac Mini Inet sharing

[EndorphinRush]

Sorry about another question regarding Inet sharing, but I can't seem to find another post that has the same issue. Though it may be the keywords i'm using I can't seem to find anything on google either(rare)...

Any who, I have my Mac Mini setup as a home theater solution and it works great! I have my router upstairs and my mac mini shares my connection to my Xbox 360 and I'm able to connect to Xbox Live, the problem however comes in when I try to access the network. My router broadcasts everything on 192.168.69.XXX and the mac when it shares puts it down to 192.168.2.XXX thus for preventing me from getting to my shared content on my windows xp file server. Generally I would just deal with it and move on but I have a little one who can manage the 360 with no problems but has a hard time with the mac (shes only 6 ) ease of use is key when your trying to catch a nap before 3rd shift!

Is there a way to have the xbox 360 stay on the same IP range as the rest of the house? Or because it's going through the Mac I'm screwed? Trying to save money here by using what I have if at all possible. Thanks for any help in advance!

 

[skoorbevad]

What you're looking to do is use one of the Mini's network interfaces (either wired or wireless) as a layer 2 bridge. I've had this interest too, except using the mini to basically act like an 802.11n access point for other wireless devices, since my only other AP is 802.11g. I'd also like my pfSense firewall to handle all the DHCP requests -- not the mini itself.

Ostensibly any wireless AP is simply a layer 2 bridge -- you can of course get APs bundled with router software to add in layer 3, etc., but if it's just an access point, it's layer 2.

From what I understand, the OSX kernel does not have this functionality enabled, sad to say. Likely because they want people to also buy Airport base stations and not use their existing machines for the same purpose.

From what I understand the code in the kernel is there, but needs to be enabled either with a boot option to the kernel or with a sysctl flag -- worst case, a kernel recompile, though that's very unlikely. I don't know exactly where these files would be under OSX/Darwin, but under FreeBSD you'd be looking at adding something like "enable BRIDGE" to the /boot/loader.conf and possibly another line to /etc/rc.conf.

 

[EndorphinRush]

Thanks for the advice skoorbevad, though I should have specified that the xbox is connected via the Ethernet port and not via wireless. I'm in short trying to spare myself the money on the wireless adapter