Hey mct.. how's it going?
Quote:
Purana,
This is useful info in general, but I don't quite understand the step-by-step procedures I need.
Anyone have advice on this?
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For Dialup :
Internet sharing is really simple on Mac -Literally just a matter of plugging it in and turning on a system preference. You mentioned you use 3 macs, but didn't mention if they were all networked yet.
If they are, you're 90% of the way there. Just go into System Prefs on the machine with the modem, go into the Sharing tab, and set it to 'share my internet connection from
Dial-up Modem' to computers using
Built-in Ethernet". That's essentially it; the mac with the modem should act as a DHCP server and gateway and all the other macs should be able to use DHCP to get a network address automatically and join the network, even the OS9 mac.
You can even do the same thing using Airport instead of built-in ethernet, with similar result -
This is what Purana is doing. Although I would say if you're going to do that, an airport base station would be preferable.
The
other way is to use marc's
airport extreme base station to do the dialing up and also share it to multiple machines. If one or more of your macs don't have Airport, you can always wire them via ethernet.
A tip for using ethernet : You can use a 5 or 8 port 'switch' as a splitter to plug multiple macs into a device with only one ethernet port, like an airport extreme. They're cheap, $40 will get you an 8 port switch with it's own power supply.
This also circumvents the problems we talked about before with crossover and straight-through ethernet cables. With a switch, you only ever need to use straight-through cables, which are more common - at least in my house. For example, my set-up is like this :
Phone line ------ [central filter/ splitter]-------[ADSL modem/router]-----[8-port ethernet switch]
From the 8-port switch, I have the following connected
- Main PC
- HP bubblejet connected via USB, and shared over the network
- Sister's PC
- web and file server PC
- xbox with xbmc, which plays videos from the main PC
- lexmark e120n laser printer
- wireless access point
- ibook connected via Airport
- my emac with it's music library, connected to my stereo component gear, which I will network soon.
Forget about the XP machine business. The airport extreme base station will do exactly that.
For Broadband :
If you do manage to get ADSL out there, then you'll probably be provided with an ethernet modem
router device. Plug this into the aforementioned ethernet switch, and all your macs are then able to work off the one device. This is how it is usually done.
If your machines aren't wired together with ethernet, then you can plug the modem/router into the airport extreme and share it over Airport.
The advantage to networking all the machines is that you can use things like afp to share files between them, or .mac to sync them all. You can play movies on one computer that are stored on another computer's hard drive, for example. And of course any machine can have concurrent internet access (though you will find with dialup, it becomes disproportionately slower with 3 machines).
I think you should tell us exactly what the situation is with each mac; like whether they have Airport on them, and if they do, how far apart physically they are, or which ones, if any, are connected via ethernet. Then we can tell you exactly what you need. There is a device for every conceivable scenario.. it's easier to work backwards from the what you have already.
- Jeremy
