Mac OS X Leopard Phrasebook

Chapter 12. Connecting to a Network

These days, a computer is hardly a computer without an Internet connection. Think about it: What applications do you use that don’t involve the network at some point? Even apps like Word and Photoshop produce files that you usually expect to be able to transfer somewhere else, whether through email or web-based file sharing. Multimedia managers like iTunes and iPhoto, although they can work without a network connection, are missing a lot of their feature sets if your Mac isn’t hooked up to a fat broadband pipe.

This chapter goes over the basic procedures for connecting your Mac to the network using the various methods available, as well as turning on the built-in firewall that will keep out unwanted traffic and ...