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How to force an app to use wifi instead of ethernet

powerplant

powerplant

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 27, 2013
106
6
I use both wired ethernet and wifi. The wifi is fast and i use it for most things but printing etc must be done over wired ethernet. Can i force an app to always use wired network?
now i turn of wifi when i print but that is not so convenient. I also want to force bandwidth hungry apps like Skype to use the wifi instead of the wired net.

thanks
 
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In principle can the tripMode app restrict wifi access but if i want to restrict ethernet access for Skype it is a different story
 
powerplant said:
I use bot wired ethernet and wifi. The wifi is fast and i use it for most things but printing etc must be done over wired ethernet. Can i force an app to always use wired network?
now i turn of wifi when i print but that is not so convenient. I also want to force bandwidth hungry apps like Skype to use the wifi instead of the wired net.

thanks
Click to expand...

All my printers operate on wifi - no need for etherenet
 
Well, I can not affect the settings here. The wifi is shared by students etc and we do not want them to have access to our instruments and printers.
But also the other way around is interesting, how can i force skype to use wifi?
 
Create one independent network, say in the 192.xxx.xxx.xxx range for Ethernet and another one, say in the 10.xxx.xxx.xxx range for WiFi; the devices that are connect to both will use the appropriate interface like ethernet to connect to a printer @ 192.xxx.xxx.xxx or WiFi to connect to a mail server @ 10.xxx.xxx.xxx; the configuration can be done with System Preferences/Network; a good but very initial read is available at http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ai...two-network-interfaces-how-separate-them.html, for example.
 
Ough,
Thanks for the tip it will for sure work, but it might be a bit to complicated for me. I will give it a try to understand it for sure but i am also welcoming something more "point and click"
 
If the printer is only available on wired ETH what is the issue you have when printing?

I'm not sure I follow why you would want anything "bandwidth hungry" (and I wouldn't even put Skype in that category), to use WiFi over ETH, ETH is normally at least as fast as ETH as both can saturate the upstream internet connection on a home connection.
 
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Also wanna have a way, that I can "route" my networks to different apps.

At work I get a LAN and WIFI network.
LAN is for work stuff and WIFI for all other stuff (private).

As to restrictions inside LAN network, I cannot receive/send mails through company network > but through WIFI network. So I have to define, that mail.app and internet-surfing goes with WIFI and other stuff with LAN.

Would be nice to have an app for that, because if I define new routes with terminal.app it doesn't work at home, because I have to edit them again at home
 
I ended up solving this problem by using two devices. One for work and one for play.

Note that "two devices" doesn't necessarily mean two PHYSICAL devices. They can be virtual machines on one physical laptop.

(There doesn't even appear to be a way to specify what network a whole machine uses, eg, the ability to prioritize ethernet over wifi when both are connected APPEARS to be an option in the Settings of OSX, but OSX does not honor those settings.)
 
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