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Networks are a fickle thing. Every so often your network, which ever method you are using, will just suddenly stop. This can be a right pain and usually happens right before you have to buy something off ebay, at that crucial time. This guide will hopefully enable new users (as well as those pro’s) to troubleshoot your own network before you have to phone a techie friend or a company. This guide is designed to be followed one after another, although you can skip to any point. I recommend you read the Anatomy Of Network Preferences, before you begin.

On your Mac there is a hosts file that controls certain IP and domain addresses. It works in a similar way to a normal DNS server. It translates web addresses to IP addresses. This file enables you to change this link. As a result you can block certain domains from loading or just have a bit of fun. You should only use this file if you really need to, as well as this changing this file is a little bit complicated and if you are new to the Mac, I would recommend skipping this tutorial.

A while ago I mentioned Freedom, the application to stop your network connections so you can get on with more work done. Well, I have been doing a lot of digging and found the Terminal command that does the entire step for you. Its obviously more manual but it gives you an insight into how ifconfig, the tool used, works.

Networks can be complicated and for anyone that isn’t a computer geek may find the Network Preference Pane a bit complicated. Although there is an assistant this post is designed to give people who are less confident with playing with preferences a bit better of an idea of what everything means. It may also help you figure out solutions to when things go wrong. The preference pane shown below is the Leopard version. The Tiger and earlier versions differ slightly but they are essentially the same.

For any one that has a wireless network and has the menu bar item, you will no that the items on the drop down list are a bit limited. For example you can’t see signal strength or any other factors, if you have a choice of wireless networks this could be a problem. As a result you could install a piece of software to do this for you. There is a work around for this.

Network work security is getting more and more important for the security of any computer. Did you know that many applications dial home. Most of the time these isn’t a problem but you may want to keep an eye on what is happening. The solution to this is to monitor your internet connections using Little Snitch.