USB Ethernet adapter & Plug-n-play question

Question

USB Ethernet adapter & Plug-n-play question

Hi All, This may seem like a dumb question to most but here goes anyhow...

I am new to Mac and recently purchased a MacBook Air 2.13GHZ, OSX Snow Leopard. My Mac came with a Ethernet / USB adapter. The first time I plugged this device in a message popped up on the screen saying the Mac had recognized this new Ethernet adapter and setup a USB Ethernet Interface for it. Unfortunately I had some issues with the connection to the cable modem I was using at a hotel here in Austria and ended up deleting the Ethernet adapter Interface from the Network Preferences page. I unplugged the Ethernet adapter from the Mac and plugged it back in. The Mac will not automatically recognize the Ethernet / USB adapter anymore. The only way to get it to recognize is to manually create a new USB Ethernet interface. Is this normal for Mac's? On a PC it will pretty much always auto discover any USB device when you plug it into a USB port. Although this is not a huge issue and I got the connection working by manually creating the interface, I am very curious why I had to do this. Is plug and play on a Mac a one time event per device? Any help / knowledge share would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Peter

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.1), MacBook Air - 2.13 GHZ

Posted on Oct 8, 2009 6:49 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 23, 2009 9:40 PM in response to Peter P. Felten

plug-in play for keyboard, mice, hard drive, flash drives. Apple was one of the first company to adopt USB; with the start of the iMac USB was on all their computers. And by adding built-in usb device class drivers companies could make devices to an open standard, and not have to make drivers.

The + - is like adding or removing a driver in xp. It's also a security feature. I you remove a network device, and lock preference, no one can use that network device without the admin password.

When you unplug the usb adapter it disable the usb-ethernet device. So you don't need to remove the usb to ethernet device from system preference.

There are some benefits to how apple has networking set up. For instance you can use the location menu to make different network configurations.

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Answer 2

Nov 27, 2009 4:59 PM in response to Peter P. Felten

Hi Peter: Once you set up the USB Ethernet Adapter it will be plug and play. I use my adapter at work and wireless at home. All I do is plug in the adapter and the network connection is immediately recognized. One helpful trick you may not know about is to order your network connections. I have my Ethernet Adapter first followed by Airport. If the Adapter is plugged in the first interface takes preference (in this case my Ethernet Adapter) and routes all traffic even if the Airport is left on. I never bother turning off or switching Networks. If I am at a hotel that is wired, I plug in the Ethernet Adapter and it is first in line so is used first. I have found this convenient and effortless.

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