Earlier this evening I worked on a client's Apple MacBook Pro. The machine had many configurations setup by someone else, other than the user. One of these configuration steps included configuring the network locations. First, within a network location (Apple > System Preferences > Network > Location), there can be multiple active network ports. By default Apple includes 4 ports: Airport, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and FireWire. Each of these can be set to inactive simply by selecting the port and clicking the button with the picture of a gear below the list and choosing Make Service Inactive.
This was important because I found that there was 2 network locations set: Airport and Ethernet. The Airport network location had everything else disabled, including Ethernet, FireWire, and Bluetooth. The Ethernet network location had everything else disabled, including Airport, FireWire, and Bluetooth. Initially, I wondered why this was configured this way. It could be inconvenient to have to manually switch network locations just to switch between Ethernet and Airport.
Then I understood why a network port having a dedicated Network Location might be important. Unexpected behavior may result if a Network Location has multiple active network ports. Fortunately, my personal experience has resulted in very few issues, if at all. In fact, Apple OS X's default configuration is for a single location to have all the network ports active simultaneously.
Nevertheless, to avoid problems it might be good practice in specific situations. At the end of the day, there should be a good balance between usability and preventing problems. I would say that this practice of separating the network ports is only good practice is a few situations. For the general user, it's more useful to just keep one network location with all the network ports active, as Apple has done by default.
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