OS X Firewall

By C.K. Sample, III

MacDevCenter has a pretty cool walk through of a look inside the inner workings of the Mac OS X firewall via the Terminal: Exploring the Mac OS X
Firewall by Peter Hickman — Like so many tools built in to Mac OS X, the firewall just works. But what is really going on inside it? Peter Hickman explains why the firewall works so well, and then takes you inside and shows you how to fiddle with things. In the end, he returns you safely to the default settings.

When most people think of firewalls, they think about security and keeping the bad guys out, but I've found that knowing about the OS X firewall can be useful for troubleshooting various sporadic connection problems (like when your internet connection appears to be up, but you cannot load that bit torrent file or you cannot
get internet sharing over bluetooth working).

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