Mac & Netsweeper

[wooksey]

We bought an iMac back in February, to use with a load of ipod touches. However, we haven't been able to connect to the iTunes store from the Mac in school. I tried taking it home and connected without a problem but when it got back to school the sign-in process just timed out as usual.

I spoke to Apple it and they said that it must be a problem with the filtering system that we use at school. But....I can connect to the iTunes store using my windows laptop, without a problem. I gave our LA technicians a call and they said that it must be a problem with the iMac, if my windows laptop was working without a problem. I told them about using the iMac at home and they went pretty quiet.

We use netsweeper and I've added some addresses for the iTunes store that I found from apple's support site, but it's still not working.

I should also say that we also have problems accessing other sites when a login is required- like our VLE!

Has anyone got any experience of using macs with netsweeper?? Any advice would great!

[mac_shinobi]

"Well known" TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products

iTunes: Troubleshooting iTunes Store on your computer, iPhone, iPad, or iPod

Check first and second links ( first link more so ref what ports it requires ). Also on the mac just to check --> sys prefs --> security --> firewall or it may be under sharing or network ref firewall ( depending on version of OS X )

Just to make sure itunes if the firewall is enabled is allowed from the mac out to the net - if the firewall on the mac is not enabled whether logged in as student or local admin does it do the same ?

Does net sweeper have any logs to indicate if its blocking any traffic from the mac and if so what traffic on what ports or something ?

[Roberto]

Can you browse the web ok using Safari?
Without knowing anything about Netsweeper, so apologies if this is nonsense, does it function as a proxy server (or do you have one somewhere else on the network)? If so, have you configured OSX to work with it as a proxy? system preferences/network/(select connection method you're using, ethernet or airport)/Advanced/proxies

[wooksey]

Thanks for all the advice!

I followed the steps from the Apple advice sites but still had no joy. I tried emailing netsweeper directly and after an email the next day saying that they were looking into the problem for me I received another email today saying that my support call was now closed!

Fortunately, I managed to get through to the right person at the LA (after phoning since February!!), during half term who monitored the URLs that iTunes was trying to access and then created rules on the filter that would let it work.

Thanks again for the suggestions

[mac_shinobi]

What URL's were these that you needed to add ?