Internet sharing on mac

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Hi all,

I have an ethernet connection and I want to use internet sharing feature on my mac. In system Pref -> Sharing -> Internet sharing, I can see a message saying internet sharing is on. But the drop down for "share your connection from" is empty. Its actually greyed out completely. Same with the field "to computers using". This field has wi-fi, firewire and etherner listed but they're greyed out. How do i enable them? Is it some permission issue?
 

Slydude

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Which Mac are you using? I think this may not work if there is only one type of connection active. For example, I can't have internet common in through ether net and also going out through ethernet unless there are two ethernet connections on the Mac. I could do in through ethernet and out through Airport or some other type of connection.
 

Slydude

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Sorry, let me clarify a bit. What I meant was what Mac hardware are you using? That will help me determine what options should be there in the sharing pane. In re-reading the initial post it sounds like there is only one possible connection type available.

If there isn't another type of connection available (second ethernet connection, Airport etc) that section will be blank.
 
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I checked here: About mac->more info->system report. I dont find airport card being mentioned in the list. I guess this is the reason right?
 

Slydude

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I would bet that is the reason you cannot activate intern sharing. There isn't another network interface that the computer can use. The ethernet connection is taking information in but there is no way to send it out to another device.

What exactly were you going to use Internet Sharing to do. {perhaps we can think up another solution. There are some wireless dongles out there that plug into the usb port which might work I know for a fact that some of them stopped working under Lion due to a lack of updated drivers.
 
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I want to connect my phone to internet but I dont have a wireless connection as of now. So I wanted to create a wifi hotspot using my mac so that I could connect my phone to mac. Any other solutions for this?
 

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There are some USB dongles out there that plug into a USB port or hub.You do have to make sure that they have driver software that works with your OS. I have one that has not worked reliably since 10.6

If you are using a Mac Pro there are some PCI cards that should work assuming there are drivers. Either of these devices installed you could activate Internet Sharing and have the Mac share from ethernet to the woreless gadget.
 
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Yes I do have a USB dongle and also the driver software which works on my mac. But in order to use this as hotspot I guess I need to configure it accordingly. Could you please elaborate on configurations if any?
 

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