Connecting to a MacBook’s Internet Sharing from a Kindle

A couple of days ago I brought home a Kindle from Amazon (the WiFi + 3G version). So far I’m absolutely nuts about it.

Kindle! Kindle! Kindle!

Kindle! Kindle! Kindle!

It does just about everything I wanted in a e-book reader and it’s much easier to take with me than the iPad. I’ll post a full review after I’ve used it for a month or two.

Anyhow, I was trying to connect it to my MacBook Pro with Internet Sharing enabled, but the Kindle would not connect to the MacBook.

After digging online a bit, I found the solution on a Kindle forum. You have to manually set up a Kindle’s connection if you want to use a Mac’s internet sharing because the Mac implementation of DHCP sucks giant nards of doom. (There’s a more technical reason, but that’s the gist of it.)

To connect a Kindle to a Mac that is sharing their internet connection, press the MENU button on the Kindle and go to SETTINGS. From there, choose WiFi settings and highlight the MacBook’s internet sharing name.

From there, you need to choose to set up the WiFi MANUALLY. Keep the security settings on WEP, but instead of DHCP, choose STATIC.

Then fill out in the following…

IP : 10.0.2.251
Subnet : 255.255.255.0
Router : 10.0.2.1
DNS : 10.0.2.1

TIP : Don’t forget on the Kindle you can press ALT-Q to enter a 1, ALT-W to enter a 2, ALT-E to enter a 3 and so on. (ALT-P is a 0)

Once I did that, the Kindle was on the wireless network downloading everything I wanted!

One final note – that last part of the IP can be anything from 220 to 254, but it’s better if you pick something high.

Thanks to ElkAintMoose and Obijohn for hammering this mess out.

15 thoughts on “Connecting to a MacBook’s Internet Sharing from a Kindle

  1. Hello There. I found your blog using msn. This is a really well written article. I will make sure to bookmark it and come back to read more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I’ll certainly comeback.

  2. OH, thanks a lot mate, it is connected. You were a great help. Thank you so much.

  3. Thanks dude, it worked.
    BTW you were the first result from “macbook internet sharing kindle” from google 🙂

  4. Hey, Thanks a lot for the post, it really works! A life saver for me that can’t connect my kindle directly to wifi…

    Great!

  5. Hi, thanks so much for this article. I had read a few other articles on the net on how to do it but they really didn’t make much sense. Followed your article through and BINGO, works brilliantly! Great work 🙂

  6. Just THANK YOU!
    This has been bothering for a while and finally got round to it!!

    “because the Mac implementation of DHCP sucks giant nards of doom”..
    gotta love that one! 🙂

  7. I’ve been attempting this process with a newer kindle fire hdx and can’t seem to get it to work. Instead of offering me the subnet and router options, it has the options of Gateway and Network prefix length. The DNS automatically fills in with 8.8.8.8 and I haven’t gotten it to connect yet. Has anyone found a workaround for this?

    • 8.8.8.8 is googles public dns server, so thats fine.
      Gateway is gonna be 10.0.2.1
      Your network prefix is your subnet: 255.255.255.0
      With the gateway address being 10.0.2.1 with this subnet mask, you should actually be able to assign your kindle any ip address from 10.0.2.2 – 10.0.2.254.

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