Troubleshooting Networking

From Applepedia

Networking has traditionally been a messy area, since you're usually trying to get products from a wide range of vendors to work together. Apple has tried to make it work as well as possible, but you never know when disaster strikes.

Usually you can split the problems with networking into three layers - the physical layer, the protocol layer and the application layer.

Contents 1 Physical layer 1.1 Ethernet 1.2 Airport/WiFi 1.3 LocalTalk 2 Protocol layer 2.1 TCP/IP 2.2 AppleTalk 3 Application layer 3.1 Samba / SMB / Windows file sharing 3.2 Internet

Physical layer

The physical layer is cabling and radio waves.

Ethernet

• My Mac can't tell that the cable is connected.

Airport/WiFi

• My Mac can't see any hotspots.

LocalTalk

• My network is unreliable and has poor performance

Protocol layer

The protocol layer is how the computers name themselves, and talk to each other.

TCP/IP

• My Mac can't see my router.

AppleTalk

• I can't see any other computers on the network

Application layer

The application layer is where you actually do stuff.

Samba / SMB / Windows file sharing

• I can't connect to Windows machines, I get an error

Internet