For those who like statistics - and I suppose I'm one of them - here are some tips for viewing network traffic, both realtime and afterwards.
netmonitor is a small app that gives nice graphs, it can be adjusted to be displayed only in the menubar (no dock icon) and is a great little tool.
darkstat is a background deamon that gathers stats 24/7. Use it to view bandwidth per minute, hour, day or month and per host/protocol using a web-interface. Simple and effective.
ntop (also here) is a great app like 'top', but for networks. It's the app darkstat is a spin-off from, and it gives you a load of stats you can throw a stick at - also using a nice web-interface. Downside: it uses 75% of CPU resources here; I'm looking into it.
Use tcpflow if you want to see the data that goes in and out of your Mac in plain text. Great to cheat with flash games that submit scores to unknown hosts ;)
[Editor's note: I haven't tested any of these network monitoring apps.]
I've been looking for some time for a way to network our Epson SP 870 colour photo inkjet under OS X. It's been a nightmare - but three months on, I've finally got it working!
We have 18 Macs connected over an Airport Network in our office, all running OS X. Epson's drivers don't support networked printing over TCP/IP, and Apple told me that USB sharing was not available in classic. But it seems it is!
Read the rest of the article for our workaround solution...
Like a lot of OS X users on NT or Windows 2000 with ISA Server, I had a problem with authenticating behind a MS Proxy Server. Every time I used Explorer, I had to authenticate my user name and password. On top of that, programs like Software Update, Quicken and Watson could not communicate correctly.
Our IT person found that the Mac was not creating a session with the Proxy Server even though Macs were supposed to be able to communicate as a secured NAT client. However, there is a simple work around that has corrected these problems.
On the Proxy server, allow the leased or static IP address for the Mac to fully "open up" to the proxy. This allows the Mac to communicate directly with the Proxy, thus allowing the Mac to communicate as a secured NAT client. Once this happens, all the programs communicate with the Proxy Server and they no longer have to authenticate with every use. Since we have done this, I have not had to authenticate Explorer.
As it turns out, Apple File Sharing is configurable, via NetInfo. Despite the dearth of documentation, you can even share folders other than ~/Public. Alas, doing the NetInfo / System Preferences dance is a hassle. So I scripted it.
Now you can control your file sharing with a single command from the comfort of your shell of choice.
[Editor's note: You can also control shares with the shareware program SharePoints, which has been discussed here before. But it's nice to have a command-line option available as well, so thanks to 'logan' for putting this together.]
For a while, I have been trying to get the Java VNC viewer working so that I can VNC into my computer from any Java-compliant browser. this proved to be a bit of trouble but, don't worry, I finally got it working. After compiling the souce code, I played around with the class files and got it working. This, combined with OSXvnc, is a great solution to remotely control your computer from any computer terminal.
It can be found on this boring site of mine. I would like to say that I take no credit for creating a "port"; I merely compiled the source code and put it in a neat package ;-).
[Editor's note: The Java VNC client has been mentioned here previously, but instructions on compiling the client were not included; "c.i.t" has provided a ready-to-run version.]
In Mail.app and OmniWeb and possibly other programs, if you click (or double-click) on the spinning arrows, the network activity window opens up. This tip will not change your life.
[Editor's note: Not a life-changer, but a nice tidbit nonetheless!]
Xerox has just released OS X PPDs for the Splash RIP, available on their Splash support page.
We have a Xerox 5765 with a RIP running Splash on a Beige G3 (OS 8.6). This was the standard configuration four years ago. Mac OS X was not supported until today (client side). The only downside to the new software is that you have to use AppleTalk. From the ReadMe in the installation file:
The Splash OS X PPD installer installs PPDs for all currently released Splash products for Mac OS X. The products installed are: G630, G620, G610, PCI 6.0, PCI 5.0, DC 4.0, DC 3.0, DC 2.0.
I have installed and used the PPD for the 5799 v.6.0 without any problems.
macosxhints has carried a tip on how to access iDisk from behind a corporate firewall before, but I have found it is even simpler using Goliath.
First choose New Connection (not Connect to iDisk!) from the File menu. Enter the URL of your iDisk; it will be idisk.mac.com/username/ where username is your iTools account username, and then add your password.
Next click the Advanced settings, click Use Proxy Server box and enter the proxy server address (the same as you use to browse) and again the port that you use for http access. Click OK and you're away.
You can then follow the other hints posted to save the connection as a file and put the icon on the toolbar for instant access, even behind your firewall.
When I found out that Apple did not include a PPTP VPN client with OS X, I was a bit disappointed. Sure, Cisco provides a VPN client for those using a Cisco VPN, but what about us folks using a Windows VPN server?
After a bit of searching, I found PiePants, a PPTP client made by Rob Newberry. It works perfectly with my Windows 2000 VPN server. Take a look at it if you need Windows VPN connectivity.
[Editor's note: I have not tried this program myself, but thought it might be of interest to some readers.]
It is possible to rather easily hack the printer driver so that Mac OS X will recognize & print to an Epson 740 networked via AppleTalk and an Axis 1440 ethernet print server. Yay!!!
I was already able to print via USB to the Epson 740, but that is of course not what we needed. We needed to continue to use the 740 as a networked printer, via the Axis 1440 ethernet print server that has worked so well for several years with Mac OS 8 & 9.
This hint might also apply to other similarly unsupported printer models that are similar to a newer, supported model.
Downside: I seem to have lost the ability to print to this printer via Mac OSX USB. Oh well. It still prints ok from Classic mode ethernet, Mac OS 9 ethernet, and Mac OSX ethernet, so I'm not complaining. (I didn't test it with Mac OS 9 USB, but that ought to still be just as it was).
