How-to: Using an AirPort card to share your net connection with your Wii

Got a Mac with an AirPort card and a Nintendo Wii? Thanks to a tutorial from Steve Clifford, you can now use your Mac’s AirPort card to share your internet connection with your Wii. This is good for Mac owners who happen to have the card but don’t have a wireless router.

First you’ll need to make sure that you’re currently connected to the internet through something other than your AirPort card. Also, make sure that AirPort is on and that you have the Wii close by. This tutorial doesn’t involve any tinkering with the hardware — which could void your warranty — just the settings.

Anyway, here we go:

Nintendo Wii - Image 1Step One: Turn on Internet Sharing

  1. Go to System Preferences, click on the Sharing icon, then click on the Internet tab.
  2. Change the ‘Share your connection from’ pop-up to Built-in Ethernet.
  3. Under the ‘To computers using’ section, check the AirPort box.
  4. Click Airport Options, and enter an easy name such as wii in the Network Name box.
  5. OPTIONAL: Use any password that fits your settings (i.e. 128 bit WEP requires 13 characters).
  6. Click OK if youÂ’re on the AirPort Options screen.
  7. Click Start in the Internet Sharing panel.

The full tutorial is after the jump!

Got a Mac with an AirPort card and a Nintendo Wii? Thanks to a tutorial from Steve Clifford, you can now use your Mac’s AirPort card to share your internet connection with your Wii. This is good for Mac owners who happen to have the card but don’t have a wireless router.

First you’ll need to make sure that you’re currently connected to the internet through something other than your AirPort card. Also, make sure that AirPort is on and that you have the Wii close by. This tutorial doesn’t involve any tinkering with the hardware — which could void your warranty — just the settings.

Anyway, here we go:

Nintendo Wii - Image 1Step One: Turn on Internet Sharing

  1. Go to System Preferences, click on the Sharing icon, then click on the Internet tab.
  2. Change the ‘Share your connection from’ pop-up to Built-in Ethernet.
  3. Under the ‘To computers using’ section, check the AirPort box.
  4. Click Airport Options, and enter an easy name such as wii in the Network Name box.
  5. OPTIONAL: Use any password that fits your settings (i.e. 128 bit WEP requires 13 characters).
  6. Click OK if youÂ’re on the AirPort Options screen.
  7. Click Start in the Internet Sharing panel.

Step Two: Gather Information

  1. Open Terminal.app and type ifconfig en1.
  2. In the output look for: inet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask Â….
  3. Take note of the IP address associated with the first inet, negating values after the # (mine was 10.0.2.1; yours may be different).
  4. Type dig. Near the bottom of this output will be SERVER: followed by an IP address. This will be the DNS server address that you will use for your Wii.
  5. OPTIONAL: Use an ASCII/hex converter (such as this one), and enter you password in ASCII to get the %-separated hex-equivalent. This should be 26 hex characters for a 13 ascii character password using 128 bit WEP.

Step Three: Configure the Wii:

  1. Select a connection to edit.
  2. Choose Manual Setup.
  3. Enter the following parameters:

 

  • SSID: wii (or whatever you chose in step one)
  • Password: enter the hex equivalent of your password
  • Auto-obtain IP Address: No
  • IP Address: Take the first IP address you obtained earlier, and make the last digit different. i.e., mine could be 10.0.2.4 (10.0.2.1 was original)
  • Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
  • Default router: The original IP Address, unchanged. (10.0.2.1)
  • Auto-obtain DNS: No
  • Secondary DNS: leave as 000.000.000.000
  • Test your connection at the top of the screen. This should work Â… and you should see successful test results from the Wii.

Go to the news channels to see if it works. If it doesn’t just check the steps again and make sure you did all of them.

Via Steve Clifford’s blog

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