Some Notes on the Machines

Ports:

support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944

Hosts:

support.apple.com/en-us/HT210060

Having studied lots of reference material:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10688852/ip-address-ranges-for-apns-servers
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT200149
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5226424?start=0&tstart=0
https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSKTXQ_9.0.0/admin/config/config_proxy_mobile.dita

it is very clear that the true situation is not very clear. However, a few things appear consistent.

First of all the IP range. Apple has 17.0.0.0/8 reserved to itself, that’s every IP4 address starting with 17. So if you were to configure your firewall to allow everything outbound to that gigantic range, it appears you’re done. That is a huge range though, and although it appears to be controlled by Apple, it is not clear that Apple is vetting all data at all of those IPs.

So we have the DNS hostnames. *.apple.com seems to cover everything, as long as “*” is multilevel in its reference, i.e.., as long as the rule refers not only to a.apple.com, but a.a.apple.com as well. If your firewall is one of the better ones which allows FQDN rule lookups, this is a much better choice than that huge subnet.

Thirdly, the ports. Apple gives this unbelievably huge list of ports, including (for just one example of strangeness) the long-obsolete “finger” protocol port. This writer will not consider opening that entire list. Happily, other references (when combined!) suggest that the following list should do nicely, in TCP only:

80
443
8088
2195
2196

What we’ve all been waiting for: An explanation as to why email messages are sometimes delayed when they are delivered to an Entourage client. (For those who do not know, Entourage is Microsoft’s Outlook client for the Macintosh.)

By default, Entourage is configured to use the equivalent of ‘Cached Exchange Mode’. This downloads items from the Exchange store on the Exchange server and stores them in a cache on the local Macintosh.

If this cache becomes corrupted, it can cause synchronization issues with the Exchange store – just like a PC running Outlook can.

The solution to try for this is similar for both platforms.
(You may want to create a backup of the local Exchange/Entourage/Outlook cache before you do this. Here’s a link to the MacTopia article explaining how to do this.)

On the Macintosh, Control-click (right-click on PCs) the folder you want to rebuild. Choose Properties.

There is a button labeled ‘Clear Offline Data’. Caution: Once you click this button, there is no verification step – the system just takes off and does it.

You will receive a notification that the offline data has been cleared when it is through.

Now, don’t panic. ALL of the items in that folder will have appeared to vanish. Simply quit Entourage (or Outlook) and then start it up again.

It will take a while, depending on how much data you have in your portion of the Exchange store, but your items will reload from the Exchange server and repopulate your folder.

Here’s a link to the ITPro article on Microsoft’s web site about this entire process.

The Apple site is chock full of information about how to get Macs to work with Microsoft networks.

The do work and they work closely with Microsoft resources including Exchange servers.

Here’s a link to a top-level article at the Apple site. From there you can follow several paths to specific topics about Macintosh Integration with Active Directory and network resources.

http://www.apple.com/itpro/articles/adintegration/

There is no reason to be afraid of Macintosh PCs . . . after version 9.x, that is.