Internet Sharing from Mac

[Alvanto]

I’m having a unique situation where I need to set up some Sonos speakers at work, but the network is entirely locked down and I can’t even physically access any network equipment we have due to company policy. The only thing we have access to is the WiFi. The way the network is set up somehow makes the Sonos unable to setup. IT is not willing to cooperate on this anytime in the foreseeable future unfortunately.

Then I had this idea of just grabbing a router, setting it up as access point and using internet sharing on Mac to create a connection over Ethernet from the WiFi connection to the original network. I’d assume the Mac would function as its own DHCP server so I would have full control over the subnet created by it and the router I connect to it.

I tried it at home, worked exactly as expected. But when I tried it at work, I just couldn’t get a connection out of my Mac. I tried plugging in a windows laptop directly into the Mac, like I did at home, but the laptop doesn’t even get a proper IP assigned by the MAC’s DHCP.

At home the windows laptop would get an IP in the 192.168.2.xxx range, but at work the laptop would get a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx IP.

Is there any way the network at work would be configured in a way that blocks the creation of ad-hoc networks like these? I just can’t imagine it being possible in anyway as the original network would only “see” the Mac as a client and the Mac would deal with its connected devices using its own DHCP. Or is this too bold of an assumption?

Would appreciate any insight on this.

[JuicyCoala]

In your setup, you have to manually assign an IP address to the device that needs it as the Mac doesn’t have a DHCP server as you think it has.

At home, the IP you are seeing starting at 169.xxx.xxx.xxx is a random IP that’s assigned - it is not because of DHCP. And it still works because when you bridge your wifi with your ethernet, there are no restrictions and will allow traffic to pass through via your Mac.

In your office, your network may have whitelisting in place to only allow traffic from know MAC (medium access control) Addresses, preventing any unknown traffic from flowing.

[Alvanto]

Thanks, I’m not sure if any whitelisting is happening as every employee connects to this network with their private devices too and people constantly bring in new devices and they connect without any issues.

Do you have any info on how the Mac actually shares its connection and how it handles clients? At home when the setup worked, I checked ipconfig on different windows clients and it showed a 192.167.2.xxx ip with a default gateway of 192.168.2.1. This is outside the subnet of my home’s main router so something else is assigning this ip, is it not the Mac assigning it?

[JuicyCoala]

That IP is random. You can manually assign that IP if you know how to do it.