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I HATE networking with OS X!!!

M

mherz

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 11, 2004
55
0
Nothing is more annoying than a small network and OS X.

What am I doing wrong????
I have three Macs connected with each other via an ethernet hub. I used to have OS 9 installed on all of them and was very happy when connecting and sharing files between the machines. "Recent Servers" under the apple menu worked well.
I bought a new PB 12" and switched to OS X on another of the three machines and still have OS 9 on the remaining two. When I try to connect by chosing the "Network" icon in a os x (10.3.5) window I often have to wait for ages for the other running machines to show up. Sometimes I can connect to them, but often it gives me the message "contacting ..., timeout in xx seconds" and nothing happens. It is often even faster to start up classic and go to the chooser and connect from there. I also have some other unreliable things, which I did not have when using OS 9, like connections being broken etc. One more thing is totally annoying when a machine that I was connected to crashes or is turned off without warning, I get a message that the machine was disconnected and that "cleaning up" or something similar (cant remember the exact phrasing now) will take one or two minutes. I cannot use the finder anymore and nothing happens. After four or five minutes I give up and do a restart.
HELP!!!! I did not change anything on the hardware (apart from my new PB). What am I doing wrong????
Grateful for any advice!
 
mherz said:
Nothing is more annoying than a small network and OS X.

What am I doing wrong????
I have three Macs connected with each other via an ethernet hub. I used to have OS 9 installed on all of them and was very happy when connecting and sharing files between the machines. "Recent Servers" under the apple menu worked well.
I bought a new PB 12" and switched to OS X on another of the three machines and still have OS 9 on the remaining two. When I try to connect by chosing the "Network" icon in a os x (10.3.5) window I often have to wait for ages for the other running machines to show up. Sometimes I can connect to them, but often it gives me the message "contacting ..., timeout in xx seconds" and nothing happens. It is often even faster to start up classic and go to the chooser and connect from there. I also have some other unreliable things, which I did not have when using OS 9, like connections being broken etc. One more thing is totally annoying when a machine that I was connected to crashes or is turned off without warning, I get a message that the machine was disconnected and that "cleaning up" or something similar (cant remember the exact phrasing now) will take one or two minutes. I cannot use the finder anymore and nothing happens. After four or five minutes I give up and do a restart.
HELP!!!! I did not change anything on the hardware (apart from my new PB). What am I doing wrong????
Grateful for any advice!
Click to expand...
You have not terribly clear about your network protocols. However, I strongly suspect that your MacOS X computers have AppleTalk disabled.

You are totally silent on your connection to the outside world. If your little LAN is connected to the Internet, then I suggest that you replace that hub with a router. I recommend Linksys. Connect your broadband connection to the router's WAN port. Connect each computer to its own LAN port. Have each computer use DHCP. Enable AppleTalk on each computer.
 
Yep, I left out some info on my setup:
All computers have apple talk enabled. I am using a hub and I have a dsl connection which I use mostly from a single computer, somtimes sharing it via the network settings and DHCP, as you say. That works fine most of the time.
Any other mistakes I could be doing?
Why is a router better than a hub?
thanks for the info
 
mherz said:
Nothing is more annoying than a small network and OS X.

What am I doing wrong????
I have three Macs connected with each other via an ethernet hub. I used to have OS 9 installed on all of them and was very happy when connecting and sharing files between the machines. "Recent Servers" under the apple menu worked well.
I bought a new PB 12" and switched to OS X on another of the three machines and still have OS 9 on the remaining two. When I try to connect by chosing the "Network" icon in a os x (10.3.5) window I often have to wait for ages for the other running machines to show up. Sometimes I can connect to them, but often it gives me the message "contacting ..., timeout in xx seconds" and nothing happens. It is often even faster to start up classic and go to the chooser and connect from there. I also have some other unreliable things, which I did not have when using OS 9, like connections being broken etc. One more thing is totally annoying when a machine that I was connected to crashes or is turned off without warning, I get a message that the machine was disconnected and that "cleaning up" or something similar (cant remember the exact phrasing now) will take one or two minutes. I cannot use the finder anymore and nothing happens. After four or five minutes I give up and do a restart.
HELP!!!! I did not change anything on the hardware (apart from my new PB). What am I doing wrong????
Grateful for any advice!
Click to expand...

I concur - I was thinking this myself last night - why the hell does it take so long to ping the computers you're attached to? Sometimes clicking Network even shows up computers that aren't even available to you, or were available to you at some time in the past. Even wierder is when you connect to a server you've connected to before, and you reconnect and it shows items on the desktop of that computer that have been moved from there, but my computer obviously has retained some sort of cache of items that were once present!

I also need advice on this.
 
mherz said:
Yep, I left out some info on my setup:
All computers have apple talk enabled. I am using a hub and I have a dsl connection which I use mostly from a single computer, somtimes sharing it via the network settings and DHCP, as you say. That works fine most of the time.
Any other mistakes I could be doing?
Why is a router better than a hub?
thanks for the info
Click to expand...

when i switch from a hub to a router, all my networking problems went away.
 
Ok. I understand the difference and the benefit of a router vs. a hub now. (sort of, at least).

BUT:

Why was OS 9 much smoother than OS X is. And why is it sometimes still more efficient to load up classic in the background and connect through the chooser than to do it with OS X. It shouldnt be that way. I would assume OS X to perform better than 9, not worse.
And it cannot only be a hardware issue (hub vs. router), or?
 
I think the biggest reason you would want a router would be due to the fact that they usually have a DHCP server built in. With OS9 this didn't mean a lot since thier networking origins were AppleTalk based. With OSX, this is a TCP/IP beast, and even the implementation of AppleTalk rides in TCP/IP packets.

Long and short of it ( without getting into way to many details ) is your discovery problems should go away with a router.

BTW: I generally hate linksys, as I have not experienced good longevity with them. I usually will pick NetGear over LinkSys. Now if your a consultant.....

Max.

One other thing.... One really cheap solution would be to go to **each** of your OS X boxes and add **all** the machine IP addresses to you /etc/host files. This should speed things up.

Max.
 
Mac OS 9 used AppleTalk in a very nice way. AppleTalk really was a very, very user friendly protocol, making it very easy for users to find and connect to another Mac on a network.
AppleTalk is a thing of the past unfortunately. It is still supported in Mac OS X, but there is no development anymore. TCP/IP is the "networking standard", and Apple is pretty much forced in using TCP/IP as the main protocol for most of the networking functions.

But being Apple, they try to make it as easy as AppleTalk is/was. Thus came Zeroconf, aka Rendezvous. Also other protocols are used in trying to make TCP/IP as easy as AppleTalk was.

In short; what Mac OS 9 did, was make the AppleTalk browsable via the Chooser, and using TCP/IP as the protocol by which you actually connected.

Mac OS X has ditched the Chooser, and tried some sort of 'all network protocols browser'. So, AppleTalk zones, Rendezvous, SMB, Workgroups, AFP.... etc. etc.
IMHO it doens't work well at all.

Try using Rendezvous more.
The Rendevzous name is set in the Sharing prefs, and you can connect to it by simply entering that name in the "Connect to Server..." (in the Go-menu in the Finder). In that window you can also save the Server you have connected to. (A bit like recent Servers in Mac OS 9).

Hope it can do you some good.
 
MacsRgr8 said:
AppleTalk is a thing of the past unfortunately. It is still supported in Mac OS X, but there is no development anymore. TCP/IP is the "networking standard", and Apple is pretty much forced in using TCP/IP as the main protocol for most of the networking functions.
Click to expand...
Are you suggesting that Apple should have stuck with AppleTalk and avoided that "network standard"? You make it sound as though Apple took the wrong path ?!?!?! Even M$ had to succumb to the fact that TCP/IP was/is THE network protocol standard (for layer 3/4 of the ISO stack). There's no choice here: Either Apple takes the approach they've taken, or they're dead meat. Rendezvous is their attempt to meld THE standard with a user-friendly configuration add-on. I guess I don't understand why you appear to be apologizing for what Apple has done. The biggest problem for Apple, these days, is pushing its user base to get the hell off of OS9. I know this is religion within certain circles, but get with the program. OS9 is an antiquated, soon-to-be-unsupported platform, and Apple cannot afford to promote its continued existence.
 
I'm just nit-picking here...

I don't believe ZeroConf was created by Apple. One of the major players on the IETF Zeroconf taskforce works for Apple - or at least does now. Zeroconf's goals are very Apple-like, so it makes sense for Apple to have adopted it. It's certainly true that Rendezvous was the first implementation of it to be put into practice.

Also note that Appletalk support in OS X was probably a major pain to implement. OS X is based on BSD (I know, you all know that already) not on OS 9 - so the IP support is likely better integrated than the Appletalk support. :)
 
Westside guy said:
I'm just nit-picking here...

I don't believe ZeroConf was created by Apple. One of the major players on the IETF Zeroconf taskforce works for Apple - or at least does now. Zeroconf's goals are very Apple-like, so it makes sense for Apple to have adopted it. It's certainly true that Rendezvous was the first implementation of it to be put into practice.

Also note that Appletalk support in OS X was probably a major pain to implement. OS X is based on BSD (I know, you all know that already) not on OS 9 - so the IP support is likely better integrated than the Appletalk support. :)
Click to expand...
As far as I can see, the closest that you can get too being correct is that zeroconf is an idea that predates Rendevous. However, most implementations of zeroconf come from Apple and these are all called Rendezvous. Before you shoot off at the mouth again, perhaps you should do a Google search. In the case of zeroconf, the first hit is the Zero Configuration Networking website. This site links you to Apple's Rendevous web site. You will find discussions of Rendevous for Mac OS X. Rendevous for Windows, Rendevous for Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD, and Rendevous for Java Clients on the Apple site. There are links to other [limited] implementations zeroconf on this site. However, Apple is the only major company with an implementation.
 
daveL said:
Are you suggesting that Apple should have stuck with AppleTalk and avoided that "network standard"? You make it sound as though Apple took the wrong path ?!?!?! Even M$ had to succumb to the fact that TCP/IP was/is THE network protocol standard (for layer 3/4 of the ISO stack). There's no choice here: Either Apple takes the approach they've taken, or they're dead meat. Rendezvous is their attempt to meld THE standard with a user-friendly configuration add-on. I guess I don't understand why you appear to be apologizing for what Apple has done. The biggest problem for Apple, these days, is pushing its user base to get the hell off of OS9. I know this is religion within certain circles, but get with the program. OS9 is an antiquated, soon-to-be-unsupported platform, and Apple cannot afford to promote its continued existence.
Click to expand...

I'm not suggesting anything.
It's just that many thought AppleTalk was real easy to use, and are frustrated with way sharing works on Mac OS X.
Don't get me wrong. I'm happy with TCP/IP, and escpecially Rendezvous! The support for other sharing protocols as well as support for other industry standards is gr8 IMHO. It makes Mac OS X a serious competitor again in larger networks.
Sorry if I sounded like I was defending AppleTalk and Mac OS 9, I was just merely implying the ease of use sharing in Mac OS 9 was. :)
 
I ask for civility here...

I do not think anyone was apologizing here, but merely trying to explain why things are. Even with Zero Config, there were other implementations around before Rendezvous. MS at one time was trying to make this a major push for Windows2000. To bad the resulting product never quite lived up to it's promise. Still IP networking was much easier with Windows than with UNIX at the time.

One point I would like to make is that it did not make sense for Apple to continue working on AppleTalk. AppleTalk made a very good workgroup protocol, but in an enterprise environment, it's packets were not routable ( through most routers ), and often got corrupted in larger networking environments. Even zone lookups could be problematic for IT shops. This was one of the major hurdles that kept Apple out of the enterprise.

Max.
 
a little more info here...

AppleTalk is being phased out by Apple by about 2008-9. Rendezvous is not totally their answer, but it is a way to make TCP/IP networking nearly as easy and brain-free like AT.

Apple dropped AT for the future due in part to the fact that AT can play havoc on corporate networks. It did at the University I worked at. It was a pain for the IT to get everything running after hardware changes, took lots of manual cofiguration.

Apple has embedded the AT protocols into the Ethernet stack, so that Apple clients can still see and interact with the other AT clients on the net, but not bother the configurations or the other clients on the network. They call it EtherTalk. It remains transparent to the IT people and equipment, so they don't care that it is there, and makes thier life easier.

Since it is embedded, it can take longer for other clients to show up. AT normally hods the network overhead, constantly shouting out, "here I am, here I am,..." Now, it just takes a little longer for clients to "hear" each other, since this is no longer done the same way.
 
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