1
I am testing the local connection between two OS X computers using netcat. They are both connected to the same router (through wifi) and have the same public IP, so I believe they have access to the same private network. Both have their firewalls turned off.
On one computer, I entered
nc -l 2000
and on the other computer,
nc localhost 2000
My understanding is that with a successful connection, whatever message that is entered into the client side should appear on the listening side. Currently, the second command is not starting netcat, which means that a connection was not established.
What are some potential issues preventing me from accessing the local network through these tests?
It is extremely unlikely your second command is 'not starting netcat', since that would give an error message. Almost certainly it is starting netcat, which tries to connect and fails and therefore immediately exits. Try
nc -v localhost 2000
to see the error. But localhost resolves to a loopback address (127.0.0.1 and/or ::1) which does not access any network at all, not even the (or a) local network. – dave_thompson_085 – 2018-01-12T07:06:11.113