OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Using Network Utility

Apple provides Network Utility to test your network status and Mac's network configuration. It's available in the Utilities folder; in the Finder, choose Go⇒Utilities or press Shift++U to go to that folder. Network Utility has eight panes.

Info

Figure 33.5 shows the utility's Info pane, which shows the status of the Mac's network adapters: the IP address (the Internet Protocol-format address on the network), MAC address (the Media Access Control identifier that is unique to each device), information on the equivalent itself, and information on the recent data traffic through it.

You choose which network connection, called the network interface, to monitor using the pop-up menu. Most Macs have three built-in network interfaces: en0, the Ethernet jack; en1, the Wi-Fi radio; and fw0, the FireWire jack. If you install other network interfaces on your Mac, such as a cellular broadband card, they show up as well.

Figure 33.5

Network Utility provides a suite of tools for checking the Mac's network connections (a Wi-Fi connection is shown here), as well as other activity on the network.

Netstat

This pane lets you explore detailed network settings. Check one of the four options—the network routing table, protocol statistics, multi-cast information, or state of all socket ...