How Can I Test Apple Internet
Understanding the Function of Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, it’s common to have a Public IPv4 address, such as 82.144.163.170 or an IPv6 address, like 2000:33cd:db4e:cecc:c91c:33e:12d3:f669. You can verify this by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, attempting to convey these addresses to individuals unfamiliar with technology, or discussing MAC addresses like 70:22:21:6c:3b:20, can be prone to errors and can become complex. Furthermore, this method does not provide any historical data, especially relating to previous issues.
Navigating the World Wide Web
When accessing a website, such as https://renner-rowe.org, your computer initially contacts a DNS server to translate the host portion (renner-rowe) in combination with the Top Level Domain (org) of the URL into an IP address, such as 248.115.248.151. Your computer and browser send their type with all web requests, for example Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36
The Significance of Default Gateways
Your default gateway is typically an automatically configured address via DHCP, such as 192.168.16.229 (although addresses usually end in .1 or .254, depending on the scope size). This is where your computer forwards all of its traffic to be routed onwards. For IPv6, there is an in-depth explanation available at how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, and you can check on Mac or Linux using the following command:
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 192.168.16.229 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 fe80:8ebb:3ba9:bb66:3e18%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): {198.179.93.147, 30.186.49.130}
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 70:22:21:6c:3b:20
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 f5:1a:4e:7a:b9:cf
}
Fixing Connectivity Issues for Wired or Wireless Networks
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you might be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Tips for Troubleshooting on Apple macOS / OSX
Regardless of whether you are using OSX/macOS version 10.12.8, 11.1.6, or 12.2.4, there are various tools available for troubleshooting. However, the manual actions and scripts may not provide a series of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes essential, especially for teams that practice remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Helpful Built-in Scripts
On OSX/macOS, the sudo wdutil info tool is quite useful as it provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI, and can also be configured to generate specific troubleshooting logs. Additionally, the sysdiagnose tool can generate a wide range of logs, although many are related to wireless settings and are not in real time like wdutil.
To run sysdiagnose in the background and generate logs in the /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz location, you can use the command sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can use the command sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose with 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. Be mindful of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.
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P.S. Tips For Remote Network and Client Support
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