How to route corporate traffic through ethernet, while general internet traffic goes through Wifi, on Mac OSX?

Question

My corporate network is currently a Windows only environment. However, we have a new director who insists on using a Mac. We have done our best to get it running in our environment, however I have run into a problem with getting him access to our printers. Currently, he is using Wifi to access the internet, in order to get around our firewall which does not have Mac compatible software, but since this is outside our corporate network, he cannot access any of the printers. When I connect him to the ethernet, the printers work fine, but he cannot access the general internet. We can temporarily get around this by disconnecting one network, and then going to the other, but this is something he doesn't want to do every time he needs to print.

Is it possible to set the mac routing table so that it will use ethernet for the corporate network (or, the printers specifically), and wifi for everything else?

Answer 1

If you go to System Preferences > Network > [Gear icon menu at the bottom of the list of interfaces] > Set Service Order… and then, on the sheet that pops up, drag Wi-Fi higher than Ethernet in the list, it will allow Wi-Fi to be the default route to the Internet, and Ethernet will only be used for whatever IP subnet the Ethernet interface is on. So if the printers he needs are all on the same subnet as his Ethernet interface, that’s all you need to do.

I don’t like to mess with the “Automatic” network “location” (configuration set). So I create a new location called “Wi-Fi before Ethernet” when I do this.