netsession_mac allow incoming connections?

Yeah, me too.

Does anyone know if it's related to this: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=914340

I'm getting the same message. Searching for the process in the Activity Monitor and clicking the "Inpect" button it tells me (under the "Open Files and Ports" tab) that the file is "/Applications/Akamai/netsession_mac_b94eec3".

Googling Akamai shows it's a download manager and that for me it was probably installed at some point by an Adobe product.

Cheers

Akamai is a download manager, it is used for some softwares to downloads demos and upgrades, like Corel apps.

Here is an apple support article that explains a bit about this as related to the application Akamai:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3923

I followed the link to HT3923 and it was not displayed properly on my mac running Lion, using Safari. It displayed and immediately was overlaid with blank whitespace. Anyway, I then followed that link on another non-mac device and found it to be "Requirements for Software Update Service, modified 3 days after the post above.

It does not talk about Akamai's download manager, so time to keep searching.

...Yes, I did download a new thing from Adobe - a copy of FlashBuilder 4.5, which I believe does use Akamai's services to accelerate downloads. Akamai provides Content Delivery devices, software, service... pushing certain content to multiple places around the internet so that a download does not always come from company xyz (Adobe in my case) servers directly. Instead there might be cached copies in Comcast's local servers/devices as well as in 100 other vendors' equipment around the internet...FYI.

SO, with all this technical talk, I'm still not clear. Is this a harmful thing that should be removed, or should it be left alone on my macbook and, if so, do I allow or block the application from accepting incoming network connections?

It is probably just fine to keep it, but I find the prompting annoying. It looks as if I may have two copies of netsession installed which others might want to check (Use Spotlight t look just for netsession or netsession_mac). Perhaps this has to do with the app prompting for Deny or Allow. I found this page on my system and referenced on the net http://www.akamai.com/html/misc/akamai_client/csd_faq.html

and it talks about whether to keep it or uninstall it... and how to uninstall it. Yes, I'm choosing to uninstall.

I uninstalled as described and seems ok so far.

I started getting this after restarts after I downloaded Quickbooks On-Line from Staples, even though I ended up never using the on-line program. Just search for "Akamai" on your system and uninstall it if you don't know what is using it. If you are using a program that requires the Akamai Net Session feature, the program will inform you that you need to install it. So, if you just want to feel safe, uninstall Akamai.

At first i thought this was a hacker, but then i looked into my system preferences and noticed Akamai downloaded on my computer.

When you click on the program, the first tab to open was Applications, then it came to me that this program uses Rosetta Stone which i did in fact download Rosetta Stone. So it is safe to accept but i would only accept if you are still using the program or if the program needs a software update, which you can check by logging into the Rosetta Stone App.

Up to you if you accept or not, i clicked no because i'm not currently using it, i'm done with level one.