Share files and internet connection between 10.4 and XP
Oct 10, '05 05:56:00AM
Contributed by: Anonymous
A problem I ran into while trying to connect a simple network of a Mac running OS X 10.4 to a PC with Windows XP via a crossover cable was that if I wanted to share my dial-up internet connection from the Mac to the PC, I had to enable DHCP on both machines. While this is great in concept, I found that the machines would not agree with each other, and assigned different subnet masks and IP address ranges to each other.
This meant I could not share files between the computers while DHCP was enabled. So here is my solution:
- Set the IP address and subnet mask on all computers to DHCP, except for the Mac that will be sharing the internet connection. Make sure to note which subnet mask and IP address range is assigned to these computers.
- Configure the Mac connecting directly to the internet to use "DHCP with a manual address" in the network preference pane, and give it an address in the same range as the rest of the computers in the network.
- Apply the changes -- after a few seconds, the Mac should assign the correct subnet mask. I'm not sure whether it is necessary to restart internet and file sharing or not.
File and internet sharing should now work correctly. The only problem I have encountered is that I cannot browse shared folders on the network in the Finder from the Mac with the internet connection -- I have to know the address of each shared folder and mount each one manually using Go -> Connect to server. So I have just added favourites to all the shared folders on the network to the "connect to server" window. Obviously, this may not be practical if the network is large with a large number of shared folders.
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