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CHAPTER 1
About Network Setup
12
Network Setup Architecture
Figure 1-1
Network configuration prior to Network Setup
The architecture shown in Figure 1-1 had a number of drawbacks:
■
There was a control panel for each protocol type, leading to an unnecessary
proliferation of control panels.
■
There was no programming interface for changing network settings. With the
explosion of interest in networking prompted by the rise of the Internet, this
proved to be a problem. Internet setup programs, whether provided by
Apple or by third parties, were required to reverse engineer the network
preferences file format. After changing the files “underneath” the protocol
stacks, these programs had to force the protocol stack to read the new
preferences through a variety of unsupported means.
■
The dependence of third-party applications on the preferences file format
and private interfaces to the protocol stack made it difficult for Apple to ship
modern network features, such as TCP/IP multihoming, and to support the
multiple users feature in Mac OS 9.
■
Resource files are susceptible to corruption when the system crashes.
Network Setup was designed to eliminate these problems by giving developers,
both inside and outside of Apple, a programming interface to modify network
preferences without relying on internal implementation details of the individual
protocol stacks.
Network Setup is being introduced in two stages. The architecture of the first
stage (Mac OS 8.5 to the present day) is shown in Figure 1-2.
TCP/IP
TCP/IP
protocol
stack
TCP/IP preferences
Control panels
Private interface
Private
preferences files
AppleTalk
AppleTalk
protocol
stack
AppleTalk preferences
Remote Access,
Modem,
Dial Assist,
Infrared, ...