How Can I Test Apple Internet Connection

Understanding Internet Addressing When using the Internet, you are assigned a public IP address such as 115.197.202.116 or the newer IPv6 address format like 2000:9de5:a51e:268:8249:d518:2265:e6fe. You can verify your IP address at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, conveying these addresses, including MAC addresses like 46:80:7c:01:2f:75, can be prone to errors and become complex, especially for those who are not tech-savvy. Understanding Internet Addressing When using the Internet, you are assigned a public IP address such as 115.197.202.116 or the newer IPv6 address format like 2000:9de5:a51e:268:8249:d518:2265:e6fe. You can verify your IP address at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, conveying these addresses, including MAC addresses like 46:80:7c:01:2f:75, can be prone to errors and become complex, especially for those who are not tech-savvy.

Understanding Internet Addressing

When using the Internet, you are assigned a public IP address such as 115.197.202.116 or the newer IPv6 address format like 2000:9de5:a51e:268:8249:d518:2265:e6fe. You can verify your IP address at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, conveying these addresses, including MAC addresses like 46:80:7c:01:2f:75, can be prone to errors and become complex, especially for those who are not tech-savvy. Moreover, there is no way to access historical data, particularly when dealing with past issues.

To access a webpage like https://kertzmann.io, your computer first contacts a DNS server to convert the URL’s host component (kertzmann) along with the Top Level Domain (io) into an IP address, such as 212.55.220.18. Additionally, with every web request, your computer and browser also provide their specifications, for example: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT x.y; Win64; x64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0

The Significance of Default Gateways

Normally, your default gateway is automatically assigned through DHCP, resulting in an address such as 192.168.107.193 (though they typically end in .1 or .254 based on the scope size). This is the point to which your computer directs all of its outbound traffic. For IPv6, detailed instructions are available in our post on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/. On Mac or Linux systems, you can verify this using:

IPv4 Routes and the Host IPv4 Route Table (inc. VPN)

netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"

0/1      172.18.12.193  UGScg  utun3
default  192.168.107.193    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.

IPv6 Routes and the Host IPv6 Route Table (inc. VPN)

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   fe80:47f:8d86:33b8:26d1%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.

Debugging DHCP for both IPv4 and IPv6

To get a look at the low level DHCP configuration (Mac/Linux):

ipconfig getpacket en0

...
domain_name_server (ip_mult): {106.179.243.99, 233.45.133.53}
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 46:80:7c:01:2f:75
  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 36:c8:18:ce:df:02
}

Resolving Connectivity Issues for Wired and Wireless Networks

When transferring data to your router, it’s important to consider whether you’re using a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.

Troubleshooting Tips for Apple’s macOS / OSX

No matter which version of OSX/macOS you are currently using - whether it’s 10.14.7, 11.1.8, or 12.1.9 - there are various tools available for troubleshooting connectivity issues. However, these manual actions and scripts don’t provide a continuous set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes valuable, especially for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).

Useful Built-in Scripts

On OSX/macOS, the sudo wdutil info command is a helpful tool which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI. This can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Furthermore, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is point-in-time data in relation to wireless, similar to wdutil.

To run sysdiagnose in the background and have it write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz, use the command: sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &. For an interactive mode, run sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose which will give a privacy warning. When not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, or you can navigate to /var/tmp using Finder with Cmd+Shift+G. Keep in mind that the file sizes are approximately 300MB more or less.

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