When connecting to the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 241.43.4.69
, or an IPv6 address, such as 2000:711f:ea52:e0f4:a68:521e:f479:45ad
. You can verify your address by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, communicating these addresses, or MAC addresses like 22:12:e6:0f:f9:a2
, can be complex and error-prone, especially for those unfamiliar with technical jargon. Furthermore, this method does not provide any historical data, particularly during previous issues.
Accessing a webpage such as https://morar.biz involves initially contacting a DNS server to translate the host portion (morar) and the Top Level Domain (biz) of the URL into an IP address, like 201.26.177.119
. Your computer and browser include important information with each web request, for example:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; AOL 9.7; AOLBuild 4343.19; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; FunWebProducts)
The default gateway is typically an automatically configured address obtained via DHCP, such as 172.31.164.180
(usually ending in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size). This gateway is where your computer sends all its traffic to be routed onwards. For detailed guidance on IPv6
connectivity, read our in-depth article on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/. To check on Mac or Linux, use the following command:
netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"
0/1 172.18.12.193 UGScg utun3 default 172.31.164.180 UGScg en0 128.0/1 172.18.12.193 UGSc utun3
Note: We are not just looking for the default but also for any VPN that overrides the public v4 address space.
netstat -rn -f inet6 | egrep -i "default|2000::/3"
If you have IPv6 active the above should return at least one route (as per below) via a known interface such as “en0 " on a Mac.
default fe80:a29a:9852:9870:a91f%en0 UGcg en0 default fe80::%utun0 UGcIg utun0 default fe80::%utun1 UGcIg utun1 default fe80::%utun2 UGcIg utun2 2000::/3 utun3 USc utun3
Note: We are not just looking for the default but also for any VPN that overrides the public v6 address space.
To get a look at the low level DHCP configuration (Mac/Linux):
ipconfig getpacket en0
... domain_name_server (ip_mult): {110.229.6.181, 221.193.23.117} end (none): ...
So, in the above we are not getting IPv6 DNS servers from the DHCPv4 reply but…
ipconfig getv6packet en0
DHCPv6 REPLY (7) Transaction ID 0x80940b Length 76 Options[4] = { CLIENTID (1) Length 14: DUID LLT HW 1 Time 668691856 Addr 22:12:e6:0f:f9:a2 DNS_SERVERS (23) Length 32: 2606:4700:4700::1111, 2001:4860:4860::8844 DOMAIN_LIST (24) Length 0: Invalid SERVERID (2) Length 10: DUID LL HW 1 Addr 99:8e:5a:69:86:ae }
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you may be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Regardless of which version of OSX/macOS you are running - whether it’s 10.12.8, 11.0.5, or 12.0.7 - there are various tools available for troubleshooting. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes essential, particularly for teams that are embracing remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA) setups.
One invaluable tool on OSX/macOS is “sudo wdutil info,” which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI and can be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Furthermore, the “sysdiagnose” tool can be used to generate a wide variety of logs, although much of it is only relevant to a specific point in time in relation to wireless, similar to wdutil.
Running “sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &” will execute the tool in the background and write logs to “/var/tmp/
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