Netcat is a powerful command line tool that can read and write data across a network connection using TCP/IP, it’s commonly used for relays, file transfer, port scanning, amongst other things. Though netcat origins are from the unix and linux worlds, netcat is also built into Mac OS X, and we’re going to use the … Read More
If you share your Mac on a network you may be interested to know who is connected to the Mac at any given time. This may include listing currently logged in users through a variety of network protocols, even locally, or perhaps just a history of users logins over a period of time. While Mac … Read More
Have you ever needed to know what type of security and encryption method a wireless network is using? While the Mac will figure this out itself when joining most networks, you may need to relay the information to others, or specify it yourself when joining other networks. You can get the encryption protocol in use … Read More
If you’ve ever joined a public wi-fi network and noticed the Finder sidebar is suddenly filled with other unfamiliar computers and network shares, and then curiously clicked on one of them, you’ve probably discovered that most of these computers have a user ‘Public Folder’ accessible to you and everyone else. This folder is included with … Read More
Sharing files between Macs and NAS drives and Windows PC’s has always been very easy, but Mavericks brought a slight change that has caused some problems for certain users in mixed PC and Mac environments. Without getting too geeky, Apple adjusted the default protocol for SMB (Samba, the Windows file sharing ability) from SMB1 to … Read More
The Mac OS X Firewall provides an optional ability to block all incoming network connections , offering a significant security boost to Macs that are located in untrusted networks or hostile network environments.
If you’ve ever wanted to watch all data transfer and bandwidth usage while you browse the web you’ll know it’s not necessarily an easy task. Thankfully, a little-known feature contained within the excellent Google Chrome web browser provides a simple solution, and it allows for easy monitoring of how much data is consumed in a … Read More
Network Locations in Mac OS X allow you to save specific configurations and settings for different networks. Once they’re setup, you can use them to change between various network configurations quickly, without having to re-enter any settings. These are perfect if you are switching between things like an automatic DHCP config vs a manually assigned … Read More
For those of us who use several different types of network connections to get online, you may want to take a moment to set the networking service priority in OS X. This insures that a Mac isn’t connecting through the wrong networking interface when multiple network services are available. For example, if you have a … Read More
Mac OS X includes an excellent command line network utility called “nettop” that allows users to monitor all network activity, traffic, and routes from a Mac to the outside world, both through local (LAN) and wide area (WAN) connections. If you’re unfamiliar with networking tools like this, you can think of nettop as a network … Read More
Nmap is a powerful command line network discovery utility that lets you review network inventory, host response and uptime, and perform security auditing through port scans, OS and firewall detection, and more. Though it’s free (and open source) and ships along with many versions of linux, it doesn’t come standard with Mac OS X installations, … Read More
If you’ve ever wished there was a good network scanning utility for iOS you’ll be glad to find Fing. Fing is a free and powerful app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that provides detailed network discovery and analysis tools right on your iDevice.
DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, and is commonly used to configure network devices so they can communicate with one another. Typically you’ll have a DHCP server (like a wireless router), and client machines on the local network (like a Mac, iPhone, PC, etc) that pull a dynamically assigned local IP address from that … Read More
MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit, and a larger MTU size generally increases efficiency of a network connection because each packet carries more data, but sometimes the default MTU sizes (often 1500) will cause issues with some networks and needs adjusting. If you need to change the MTU size on a Mac, you can do … Read More
AirDrop is probably the quickest and easiest way to transfer files between Macs these days, thanks to it’s instant ad-hoc network it lets Macs send files back and forth – without even being connected to the same network. As is, using AirDrop is easy through the Finder, but now with Mac OS X you can … Read More
We’ve shown you how to generate MAC addresses randomly and then how to go about changing a MAC address in OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, but why have those be two separate actions? Using the command line, you can combine the two events into a single action to generate a valid MAC … Read More
Modern versions of OS X allow you to share files securely with another individual without creating a new user account for them. Instead, authentication gets handled by the individuals Apple ID, and a separate password is set to allow that Apple ID to share files and folders on your Mac. This can be preferable to … Read More
A long hidden airport command line utility buried deep in Mac OS X can be used to scan for and find available wireless networks. This powerful tool is very helpful for network admins and systems administrators, but it’s handy for the average user to help discover nearby wi-fi routers as well.
