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[OM] Re: Salt in the wound [Was Re: (OM) OT XP thoughts]

Subject: [OM] Re: Salt in the wound [Was Re: (OM) OT XP thoughts]
From: Dan Mitchell <danmitchell@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:22:18 -0600
Jan Steinman wrote:
>> From: Dan Mitchell <danmitchell@xxxxxxxx>
>>
>> All the Mac will tell me is
>> "couldn't connect", but why it can't connect is impossible to detect.
> 
> Do you know how to look at system logs and use networking utilities?

  Yup, I did some linux admining for a while, I've run wireshark to 
watch packets and such, etc -- and, I guess, I should have tried that 
sooner, rather than assuming that the Mac worked the way it says it does.

  The problem is that on the Mac, the networking setup doesn't live in 
the same place as it does on Unix systems (and, if I'm honest, the last 
time I did anything serious there was a while ago, so I'm not as fresh 
as I might be). To set up wireless networking on the Mac, you have the 
Mac's dialogs, and that's it -- there's no documentation on which .plist 
files map to what, so while I can poke around in those, I'm doing it all 
blind. Granted, Windows isn't all that much better, but I haven't seen 
as many things on Windows that just plain don't work right, and which 
aren't fixed sooner or later. (try getting networked printing to work on 
a Mac, too -- again, there's fundamental brokennesses down in Tiger 
somewhere, and while I could find a fix by browsing forums and manually 
editing files, I wish the interface had a mid-level between the "click 
here and it'll magically work" level which is great when accurate, but 
useless when not, and 'vi /etc/printcap' or whatever).

> Also, is there any special reason you're using WEP? Is it something  
> your employer requires? It slows down the network, and you get most  
> of the "security via obscurity" that you get from WEP by simply  
> restricting wireless access via MAC address.

  That's because the wireless card I have in my PC doesn't support WPA 
and I haven't got around to buying a new one yet -- I know WEP is next 
to useless, but it's not _quite_ useless, so my main goal is that if 
someone's wardriving around, they'll glom onto one of the other open 
connections floating around, rather than searching for mine. I watch my 
router's clients every so often, and haven't seen anyone piggybacking so 
far.

  -- dan

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