Network Engineer + Mac = Love
I switched to Macs with the acquisition of a 17″ Apple G4 Powerbook 5 years ago. I haven’t really looked back since then.
At the time I got the Mac, the PC laptop I had up until then was dual booting SuSE Linux and Windows XP professional. It was an HP Pavilion Laptop that was crumbling after owning it for a mere 18 months. There were cracks in the case, the top of the body was wearing away where my palms rested, the painted letters on the keys were eroding… physically, it was a mess. Outside of the corrosion of the laptop exterior, running both Linux and Windows sucked. I did OK keeping Windows mostly malware free (almost impossible these days) but it’s constant inconsistencies and lack of stability made me crazy. I also enjoyed a Unix like command line and CygWin didn’t cut it for me. I liked SuSE Linux but every time I would tweak this little thing over here, something would break over there. Don’t get me started on the wireless drivers. Some of my other network engineer friends started telling me about their experiences on Macs and it sounded promising so I thought I would give it a shot. The thing that gets me about using OS X on a Mac is the sheer usability. I’ve never been on an OS that is more stable, is laid out more thoughtfully or that I have to screw with less. It is just a really usable Unix that is easy enough for grandmother to use while still having the low level tools a CLI jockey yearns for. The other particular strength that struck me is the rapidly growing development community. There is some really cool software for guys in my profession. I’ll list some out here in case you’re someone who is on the fence about Macs, maybe someone who has been using it and needs some direction or even someone who has been on a Mac for years and may not have heard of a tool or two here.
ZTerm: The one and only free GUI terminal emulation program for the Mac. It’s been and will be around forever. I open this guy every time I am configuring my latest network toy fresh out of the box. I highly recommend getting a Keyspan USB to Serial adapter to use with it.
TFTPServer: Considering the name, I hope you have this one figured out. Even though the page says “works with Tiger” (10.4), it works for Leopard (10.5) too.
Telconi Terminal: This one sure is neat. It’s a purpose built application for telnetting or SSHing into Cisco routers and firewalls then creating an interactive configuration environment. What this does is give you a little more graphical view to make a number of edits to a config and then publish them when you are ready to push the changes. It costs a few bucks but it might be worth it if you spend a lot of time slaving on the CLI.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: When you’re forced to log into those awful Windows boxes (YUCK!) you still can with this handy tool. It even maps folders and printers from your Mac to the Windows box you are connecting to. I still use this for that one Exchange box I can’t seem to get rid of.
Chicken of the VNC: A VNC client with a semi-clever name (they probably think more so than I do) that let’s you create remote management connections to computers running the server software. It also gives you the capability to bookmark connections which is nice.
MacPorts: For all those Linux/Unix/BSD command line utilities you might use, MacPorts will probably cover the majority of them. Being something like the ports system on the BSDs, MacPorts downloads the source code for the desired app then compiles and installs it. There’s also a nice graphical front end for MacPorts called Porticus.
Wireshark.app: This is a custom compiled Wireshark for OS X Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5). Wireshark is the de facto protocol sniffer for digging to get to the bottom of that network problem that has been making you nuts for weeks.
I probably have a few more that I’m neglecting but there’s a bunch. If you’re thinking “Man, that list is weak. I have some killer apps!” leave some feed back in the comments and let us know about them.
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