Wireless Connectivity with the iPod Touch

08/19/2008

With a recent upgrade to a MacBook Pro, I also got an iPod Touch. I don’t do enough out of my home office to justify an iPhone, so I thought the iPod Touch was a very handy tool - not to mention that it was free. The next obvious question was how to get the wireless connectivity.

On a recent trip through eight southern states the iPod was handy in the hotel to catch up on email, check the weather and get directions for the next day’s drive.

Then after I got home I the time came to resolve this issue of wireless connectivity. I thought if my MacBook Pro has a wireless card in it there must be some way to use that to connect to the Internet. I didn’t want to buy a wireless router, so I finally took my dilemma to the Apple Discussion boards and got a very kind replay from a gentleman in the U.K.

Here is the solution as given by mrtotes

Any Mac with and Airport card can be set to act as a very basic router.  This assumes that you use the Ethernet port to connect the MBP to the Internet:

  • Navigate to  menu > System Preferences… > Sharing > Internet section.
  • Switch on Internet Sharing and choose “Sharing your connection from”: “Built-in Ethernet”.  To computers using “Airport”.
  • To secure the connection (highly recommended) go to  menu > System Preferences… > Sharing > Internet section.
  • Click on “Airport Options...” and check “Enable encryption (using WEP)”.
  • Then enter a password twice. You will need to enter this password to share your connection, although you should be aware even 128bit WEP isn’t all that secure.
  • Additionally OS X IP firewall is probably blocking incoming Port 80 requests (i.e. web traffic).Go to  menu > System Preferences… > Sharing > and under Services check “Web Sharing”. This is for providing an internet connection only.

    Note: You can’t sync to iTunes in this way.

    Needless to say I was delighted when my MacBook Pro showed up in the Wireless network connection options in the Settings window. Now I don’t have to wait for a trip before I can use all the features of the iPod Touch.

    Thanks mrtotes!

    Posted by Forrest (0) Comments • Permalink