Networks can be complex. They’re a lot better than they used to be, but they’re still the most complicated part of your Mac. When you send a document to a networked printer, it’s handed down from one protocol to another, broken into chunks, each with their own addressing scheme, until eventually it’s transmitted as radio signals to represent those bits and bytes.
As your print job flies through the air, it encounters interference and crosstalk from mobile phones, microwaves, and power tools. Your Wi-Fi access point plucks this signal from the air and reassembles the scrambled mess. Small errors are corrected, large errors are replaced with valid data, patiently re-sent. Your router reads the address on each packet and chooses the best way to pass it to its destination. At the printer, the packets of data are placed in the correct order, the envelopes are opened, and the wrappers discarded. As your document is finally translated from electricity to ink, the printer sends you a confirmation message that this miraculous endeavor has succeeded. And to get to you, that message makes the same incredible journey back through the protocol layers and across the airwaves to reach your Mac.
At least, that’s what you hope happens. With so many different steps, it’s no wonder that things sometimes go wrong. Network problems—with their intermittent faults and error messages—can feel daunting. But we’re going to put a stop to all that. This guide will show you how your network is put together and where the choke points are. We’ll cover how to set up a new network and why some are more error-prone than others. We’ll tell you what to buy and what to avoid.
Despite all this, your network may still sometimes break. Long after death and taxes have both been abolished, network problems will remain. Home networking is a big subject, and it can confuse even the hardiest computer geeks. But after educating yourself with this guide, you can school your network issues before they school you.
