Apple Network Setup manual The architecture shown in -1 had a number of drawbacks

C H A P T E R 1

About Network Setup

Figure 1-1Network configuration prior to Network Setup

Control panels TCP/IP

Private interface

Private preferences files

TCP/IP protocol stack

AppleTalk

AppleTalk	Remote Access,
	Modem,
protocol
	Dial Assist,
stack
	Infrared, ...

TCP/IP preferences AppleTalk preferences

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.

12Network Setup Architecture