Can you explain why I see this under ‘Bypass proxy settings for these Hosts & Domains’? *.local, 169.254/16

Thank you, IDK if I understand. 😊 So, Is it okay to "bypass" that setting? Why do I want to bypass it under proxy settings on my network? Please advise. Aloha from me < really truly technically challenged.

*.local is any addresses that point back to your Mac.

169.254 is the prefix of a self-assigned IP address. When you set your Mac up to get an IP through DHCP and it does not get a response from the DHCP server, it self-assigns and address that begins with that address. So, again, it says to bypass the proxy for any address that points back to your Mac.

And just to make it clear in case it was not so from Barney-15E's answer, those entries are correct and proper entries added as default by Apple. Even if you were to add additional entries you should not delete those default entries.

Asuncion1981 wrote:

Thank you, IDK if I understand. 😊 So, Is it okay to "bypass" that setting? Why do I want to bypass it under proxy settings on my network? Please advise. Aloha from me < really truly technically challenged.

The original purpose of a Proxy was so corporate networks could put up a firewall to keep the outside world out and to limit what traffic employees could send to the outside world (generally web connections, but some companies configure their firewall to allow some additional traffic).

Anyway, systems inside the company generally need to access lots of other systems inside the company, including internal web services. If ALL traffic was sent to the firewall, employees would never be able to access anything inside the company.

Moving back to your home. Most users at home, just have a simple Local Area Network (LAN), and it is possible they want to access devices in their home, even if they have a Proxy setup for their network access. This would be the .local domain. So excluding .local should allow any app that would use the proxy server to also know that if the connection is local, they should just make a direct connection, and not try to go through the proxy server.

Finally, MOST home users do not need a proxy server.

But there are some services that will use a proxy server to make your web surfing look like it coming from some other location. Or a proxy server has been setup to filter all the web traffic going to from the computer.

You say you are technically challenged. So I would wonder why you would be using a proxy server.

Now if you tell me you are remotely connecting to your company over a VPN connection, and having a Proxy server configured is the only way to also surf the web while connected to your company, then that would explain the use of a proxy. AND if you are using a VPN, there is a good change the VPN will not allow you to talk to anything on your home network (which is a real pain when you want to print something on a home network printer; but I digress). Anyway, if you are using a VPN it may not matter whether your proxy setting bypass .local or not, as the VPN often times sends ALL traffic to the VPN server.

And having a separate network location for work with the VPN and a proxy server vs when NOT using the VPN and do not need a proxy server is an excellent use of multiple network locations (and my main use of multiple network locations)

I had the same question. Using my MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014) macOS Sierra, the wi-fi keeps going off, I am trying to figure out why. I created a new location under my Network designated by my ISP. When I go to Network>Open Network Preferences>Assist Me>Diagnostics>

The dots by Internet and Server are yellow for a second then turn green.

Am I okay or do I need to do a Wireless Diagnostics?

The dots by Internet and Server are yellow for a second then turn green.

Am I okay or do I need to do a Wireless Diagnostics?

The dots will be yellow while it attempts the connection. Since they turn green, they have made a valid connection.

*.local is any addresses that point back to your Mac.

Correction. .local is your current LAN subnet domain. So any system on your local LAN is in the domain .local

"localhost" is a hostname that points back to your Mac