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Does my MacBook - which is connected via Thunderbolt bridge to an iMac with Internet Sharing - see devices on the network the iMac is connected to?

I can see a new subnet is created on the Thunderbolt bridge adapter: 192.168.2.x

My main network is 192.168.1.x - the iMac is connected to this on Ethernet adapter.

Can I let the MacBook connect to other devices on the 192.168.1.x subnet? I want to connect to a network share on another device in this upstream network.

Ideally:

  • I would be able to assign the MacBook with an (additional?) IP address in the 192.168.1.x range.
  • Bonjour would be able to find devices on the upstream network that had file sharing enabled, and show them in the Finder sidebar.
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Enabling Inter Sharing on your iMac makes it a NAT router. Its main purpose is to connect the downstream networks (192.168.2.0/24) to other networks (like your main router connects your internal network(s) to the internet).

Your MacBook will connect to either other devices in the upstream network (192.168.1.0/24) or the Internet.

If you want to share a service on your MacBook (e.g. an Apache server) to the upstream network (192.168.1.0/24), you would have to forward the respective port on the iMac and add routes to the networks 192.168.2.0/24 on all other devices in the network 192.168.1.0/24.

Assigning an IP address of the 192.168.1.0/24 to the MacBook isn't possible.

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  • Thank you @klanomath ; so you're saying I could connect from the MacBook to an upstream device on 192.168.1.0/24 without further setup? Using the setup in its default configuration, I was unable to "see" other devices on the upstream network for the purpose of mounting network shares; Bonjour service did not seem to pick up any of the machines and show them in the Finder sidebar. I wonder if this would be a matter of waiting? I have edited my question to add this in.
    – trebor
    Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 10:27
  • @robrecord Bonjour only works within a broadcast domain. Without additional tools/further config this is 192.168.2.0/24 for the MBP.
    – klanomath
    Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 10:44

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