I bought a retina 15", but it will not make a network connection to my 27" iMac 2 feet away. The wifi is working fine on both units, but prefer to use ethernet cable on 27". The question is, why can I not ewstablish a network connection between the 2? Air

Question

my desktop iMac 27". The odd this is, the AirDrop works fine, so they can obviously see each other over wifi.
Sometimes, when I launch network on the 27, I will briefly see my retina notebook attempting to connect, but after a few seconds, the notebook icon disappears until I relaunch. Then we can go thru the same exercise, ad nauseum.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Thanks, Linc, but  that almost helped:
Because the retina 15 only has a wifi connection (no ethernet), that's the connection I'm stuck with for the notebook. But on the 27iMac, I did have both ethernet and wifi enabled. When I turned the wifi off on the 27, therer was a brief moment when both computers were showing their counterparts when I tried to make a network connection. BUT, after a few seconds of 'searching', the computer I was trying to connect to disappeared from the Network list.
So I tried the opposite; the retina can only connect thru wifi, so that's a given. I swithched my ethernet off and then enabed the wifi on the 27 and ....same thing: When I try a network connection, there are a few seconds of 'searching', then the ony option I'm left with is share screen, which doesn't work either.
I've read the 'dropped' network is a problem with the retina, but the odd thing is that I never lose my internet connection—that continues to work fine, as does Air Drop—but I can't seem to connect, network-wise.
Any ideas about the dropped network?