Writing for Extreme Tech , Bruce Brown has posted the first part of a two-part article looking at Mac OS 9.1 and OS X Home Networking. The thrust of Brown’s article looks at getting Macs working on both wireless and wired networks.
There won’t be any surprises or revelations in this article for users who are already skilled at getting their Macs working on local area networks, but Brown examines all basic areas of setting up a Mac with a network connection, ranging from the physical connection of an Ethernet network to what it takes for your Mac to recognize and configure an AirPort card. Brown also offers some info about setting up you Mac to support Wired Equivalency Protocol (WEP) security used by your AirPort Base Station.
He looks at both Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X, and examines the differences in control panels that affect networking setups. “The greatest difference between OS 9.x and OS X, from a home networking perspective, is consolidated configuration screens in OS X,” wrote Brown.
“If you’re already running a PC-based wireless network, adding Macs for Internet access sharing is indeed straightforward and simpler than adding PCs (at least systems running versions of Windows prior to Windows XP). Simple network adapter configuration and near-automatic network access mean that you should be able to add Apples to your network in under 10 minutes each,” wrote Brown.
A subsequent article penned by Brown will focus on what it takes for PCs and Macs working on the same network to share network-based services like application, file and print sharing.