Hi everyone,
This is my first post, and it's more of a "how to" than a question, but here goes:
My PS3's wireless internet connection has been hideously slow for ages, so I thought I'd try to connect it to my 2008 Macbook and share it's internet connection. I've seen this question posted on various forums, but I found the information to be unclear (at least to me) and incorrect. I'm by no means a computer expert, especially when it comes to networking, but I ended up figuring out how to get it working perfectly using plain logic. I hope this helps some of you.
In essence, you have to connect your PS3 to your Mac in the same way that your Mac connects to your router. Your Mac has to act in the same way your router does when a new device connects to it. i.e. your Mac will become the DHCP server, DNS server and Gateway for your PS3. This thought process helped me a lot.
1. Ensure your Mac has an internet connection, then connect an ethernet cable between your Mac and PS3 and turn it on.
2. Enable internet sharing on your Mac. Go to System Preferences > Sharing. Click on Internet Sharing. For the "Share your connection from" option, select "Airport", and for the "To computers using" option, select "Ethernet". Check the box next to "Internet Sharing".
3. The next thing I did was reserve an IP address on my router for my Macbook. In my case it was 192.168.0.4. This ensures that my Macbook will always have the same IP address whenever it's connected to my router.
4. Go to System Preferences > Network and click on the Ethernet tab. If there is no Ethernet tab, create one by clicking on the small "plus" symbol.
5. For the "Configure" option, select "Using DHCP with manual address". In the "IP Address" field, enter an address that is different to that of your Mac, router or any other device connected to your network. I used 192.168.2.1. For the "DNS Server" field, enter the IP address of your Mac. In my case this was 192.168.0.4. Now you are done setting up your Mac.
6. On your PS3, go to Settings > Network Settings. Make sure the "Internet Connection" option is enabled, then click on Internet Connection Settings > Custom > Wired Connection > Auto-Detect > Manual. For the IP address field, enter an IP address for your PS3 which is in the same "pool" as the address you chose for your ethernet connection in step 5. I chose 192.168.2.2. "Subnet Mask" should be 255.255.255.0. "Default Router", "Primary DNS" and "Secondary DNS" should all have the address of your ethernet connection. This, in my case, was 192.168.2.1 (see step 5).
7. The next setting, "MTU" should be left at "Automatic", unless your ISP gave you a specific value. The "Proxy Server" option should be set at "Do not use" and "UPnP" should be "Disabled".
8. That's it. Enter those settings and test the connection. If it doesn't work, restart your PS3 and it should. I tend not to pay any attention to the download and upload speed estimates as they never seem to be accurate.
Just to reiterate, I am not an expert. This setup just seemed logical so I guess that's why it worked (at least for me).
Anyway, I hope this helps.
