# Macbook sharing wifi to Blackberry



## dcsillag (Apr 25, 2008)

To answer the obvious question of "why?" or "just use a regular wifi router" bits, I'm trying to do this because I want to be able to use the in-hotel broadband with my T-Mobile BlackBerry so I don't pay airtime when I'm in another country (with UMA, it'll basically do voice over ip), and since I'm traveling, I don't want to have to carry any extra stuff as I have enough already.  And yes, it works just fine with my Linksys at home.

I've tried the normal wifi connection sharing business via System Prefs->Sharing->Internet, but what I am seeing is a DHCP issue, presumably with bootpd.  I see the DHCPREQUEST come in, but no corresponding DHCPOFFER is generated back, so the Blackberry doesn't get an IP address and joining the network fails.

I can't figure out why bootp won't give it an IP address.  So I tried to use a combination of dhcpd/natd and misc, but I can't get the wifi interface to get into the "I'm an AP" mode (I think it's called master) so the blackberry can find it (I tried the peer networking mode, but that didn't work either).  I also tried replacing the regular bootpd with a shell script to do dhcp/etc., but it fires up bootpd with the dhcp port already bound.  The -P option to bootpd appears to tell it to use the already bound dhcp port on stdin.

So I'd either a) like to fix bootpd to generate the offer, or b) get the wifi interface into "I'm an AP" mode.

Any ideas?


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## wumpus (Feb 23, 2009)

I had the same problem with my bb 8820 trying to use a Macbook Pro or Mac mini as a WAP. I had additional information in that a Palm T|X could connect and get an IP from the Macbook Pro or mini, but my bb could not. I never could get the DHCP to work between the two (bb and mac *) so I followed these instructions to hard-code the IP on my bb... which worked.

If anyone gets the DHCP issue resolved, I'd love to know how.


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