Home / ubuntu / Questions / 187514
Accepted
James
Asked: 2012-09-14 13:22:20 +0800 CST

How to share my wireless connection to other wireless devices

  • 772

I am aware that I can share my wired internet connection to other devices wirelessly, but what I need now is a little more complex. I am limited to one device over the wifi but would like my macbook to have internet as well. It's in another room so ethernet is not really an option. I really would like to share the wireless from my ubuntu (it's on more) to other wireless devices.

After some light googling I can't find anything even remotely useful as they all involve an ethernet cable at some point. Has anyone here had any luck with anything similar?

I am running 12.04 LTS just for reference and have a Belkin G wireless USB device. If anyone knows a possible procedure I can find out about the chipset etc. if needed. I understand there may be hardware limitations.

12.04

2 Answers

  1. You could setup a router running open-ddwrt or seavsoft even and then use it as your access point. The way it would only technically connect one device, but you would have your own internal wireless network.

    I know wrt54g has this functionality with the custom firmware, but I doubt your laptop has this capability.

    I would look at picking up one of these cheap devices it will save you a lot of headaches because its meant to do stuff like this.

    http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=wrt54g

    http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

    Documentation on how-to setup a repeater bridge - http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge

    Hope this helps.

    • 1
  2. Best Answer

    I found a workaround although it's not what I was originally after.

    Open up a terminal on the first computer ctrl alt t

    Run ifconfig -a

    Look for the MAC address following wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr

    On the other computer, if its a linux run sudo ifconfig wlan0 down

    then sudo ifconfig wlan0 hw ether your desired MAC address here

    then run sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

    Or if the other computer is running OSX (boo hiss!) like in my case then run sudo ifconfig en1 ether your desired MAC address here

    They will both connect appearing as one device. This is called spoofing a MAC address.

    • 1