Turn mac into a personal hotspot while connected to network via wi-fi

Question

I have two computers, one is a mac and the other is a windows PC. My mac is connecting to a home network through Wi-Fi but my windows PC isn't picking up the signal.

I want to turn my Mac into a personal hotspot, to see if the windows PC can connect to the home network through my mac. All the information I can find says to connect the mac to the network through an ethernet cable first, but I don't have one handy. I need to be able to do this through wi-fi.

It's not critically important, but it is an interesting problem.

Answer 1

Your Mac would need two WiFi interfaces to do that. You could add a USB plug-in one, or you could use an Airport Express as a WiFi extender with no connection needed to either computer. I see older AExes listed on Craigslist for $40 - $50.

Answer 2

When sharing the Internet connection using the Sharing system preferences pane, it only allows you to share 'from' one interface 'to' another.

As a result of this, I think it is likely to be difficult to do what you are trying to do, if it is at all possible.

Answer 3

I'd strongly recommend against trying this kind of identical network to network sharing. You are likely to lose more time troubleshooting than the cost of putting in simpler equipment to get this right in the first place.

What work great here would be to take a basic router and using it as an access point sharing out the wifi internet connection over ethernet to both the Mac and the PC. A good router is likely to grab a cleaner signal than either of the computers. If your ethernet cables are even two or three meters, you'll have a lot better opportunity to tune the position for better reception.

As a specific example of how ethernet can help on a wireless connection, my Huawei B200 offers much better performance via ethernet than it does when sharing out is 3G connection via wifi (ping times are 15ms instead of 80ms, connections all start fast instead of fits and starts).

Building as much of your networks as wired as possible will save you a tremendous amount of time and offer substantial performance wins.