Since a few months I'm having a networking problem in which I can no longer connect (either wired or wireless) to a MacBook Pro from the other Macs on the home network, but a connection works just fine when it is made from the MBP to the others. This onesidedness wasn't always the case, as things worked OK once I had fixed a basic issue about a year and a half ago (
Nonreciprocal Mac network listings), but since this somewhat different problem appeared my troubleshooting hasn't yielded a solution yet.
The link above describes the network in some detail, and this is still valid; the only difference is that the Macs now run Leopard except for one MB on Snow Leopard. I checked the current Network settings (including IP# and subnet mask) and they look OK; sharing is enabled everywhere. To be sure, I disabled sharing on the MBP, then re-enabled it, but this didn't change things.
The problem manifests itself in that the MBP is listed in the various (Go>) Network windows, but selecting it never goes anywhere until the attempt times out ('
Connection Failed'). Interestingly, the MBP is the only Mac also represented as a PC server, but this option is nonfunctional.
Using 'Connect to Server' with the appropriate IP address won't work either, and returns the error message '
You cannot connect to this server because it cannot be found on the network. Try again later or try a different URL.'
From the other Macs' point of view the MBP behaves as if it were sleeping, but it isn't. Any guess(es) as to what I'm missing here?