Is Rendezvous Sharing More Than You'd Like?

Gropo asks: "I just got an email from my father who has just recently upgraded from OS 9 to Mac OS X on his PowerMac. He's connected to the 'net via Adelphia Cable and shares his TCP connection with my Mother's iMac via Software Base Station. He got a call from his neighbor (also running Mac OS X) who noticed 'My Father's Computer' show up on his network. My first thought was: 'He's picking up your AirPort signal' - alas the neighbor has no AirPort card. The neighbor *does* however also have an Adelphia cable modem. I asked him to scan for available afp:// servers and sure enough, a foreign machine showed up. What's the easiest way (if at all possible) to enable auto-detection for the local wireless LAN (useful for file and printer sharing within the household) yet remain invisible to other people also behind the cable companies' local DHCP box?"

Comments

Re:Services

[mkldev]

It would be more accurate to say that port 548 is AFP (the appletalk filing protocol) over TCP. AppleShare is an old term that refers to the sharing servers that existed prior to personal file sharing, and is basically deprecated. AFP refers to the low-level protocol itself.

AppleTalk historically can refer to either the family of protocols or to DDP (datagram delivery protocol) that is used for non-TCP AppleTalk communication. In the context of pretty much everything but the network pane in Mac OS X, AppleTalk refers to the protocol family. In that single case, it refers to DDP binding to a particular interface, and the less-descriptive use of the word "AppleTalk" is retained for historical reasons to avoid confusion, AFAIK.

In other words, you're both right, kind-of.

Re:time to "switch"

[Anonymous Coward]

Gropo's dad again. The earlier mail got truncated, so you can see how my antediluvian geekness has deteriorated. Don't know what happened to it (the mail that is). I was also unable to establish an account on this site (a further measure of my ineptness).

The reason my computer showed up next door was due to the LAN created by my (cable) ISP. I share this with the neighbor. My computer was identified as "my-names-computer", so it is no mystery how my neighbor recognized it.

He is a dentist and even less Mac knowledgeable than I, but he knows how to dial the phone, so he gave me a call.

My latest problem is that Mail doesn't seem to allow me to set up an account that uses one site for sending (my cable isp) and another for receiving (another POP server). Outlook express was quite happy with this arrangement ,but it is not obvious how to accomplish this using the control panels for Network setup and/or Mail Account setup.

Thanks for all the suggestions for resolving my other problem. I changed the "name" of my computer and turned on the firewall, so I feel relatively secure here in my bucolic surroundings.