When you connect to the Internet, you receive a Public IPv4 address such as 146.46.251.47
or an IPv6 address like 2000:fea:271:f1a9:6254:fee7:d30:80e2
. You can verify this by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. Translating and communicating these addresses, along with MAC addresses like cc:77:5f:4d:55:a6
, can be challenging for those not well-versed in tech, and it fails to provide historical data.
Accessing a webpage such as https://rolfson.name involves initially accessing a DNS server to convert the host portion (rolfson) combined with the Top Level Domain (name) of the URL to an IP address like 183.164.121.24
. Your computer and browser send their types with all web requests, for instance:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36
Generally, your default gateway is an automatically configured address through DHCP. This could be a default gateway like 10.255.70.67
(often ending in .1 or .254 based on scope size), where your computer directs all its traffic to be routed onwards. For IPv6
, detailed instructions can be found in our article how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, but you can verify on Mac or Linux using:
netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"
0/1 172.18.12.193 UGScg utun3 default 10.255.70.67 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:dd01:8971:a1c1:48a9%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): {158.33.184.187, 65.190.138.98} 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 cc:77:5f:4d:55:a6 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 e5:16:9e:24:55:0e }
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you might be using a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Regardless of whether you are running OSX/macOS version 10.12.9
, 11.0.7
, or 12.1.7
, there are various troubleshooting tools available. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes valuable, especially for teams that are adopting remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
On OSX/macOS, the sudo wdutil info
tool is quite useful as it provides a dump of current wireless-related settings to the CLI, and can also be configured to generate specific troubleshooting logs. Additionally, the sysdiagnose
tool, while perhaps more comprehensive, can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is specific to wireless and is similar to wdutil.
To run sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &
in the background and generate logs in /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz
. Alternatively, for an interactive execution (with minimal interaction), run sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose
, which will prompt a privacy warning. If not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, allowing navigation to /var/tmp
or using Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to locate the path. Keep in mind that the file sizes are approximately 300MB.
Digital work requires reliable connectivity for voice, video, and data. Inevitable Wi-Fi, network, and system issues cause teams to lose time and productivity, or worse, to miss out on opportunities. Whether working from home, a shared space, or an office, and irrespective of the network being managed or unmanaged, forward thinking technical teams embrace smarter tools to save their users and clients time and money! See how PanSift provides instant remote troubleshooting, irrespective of location 🏠🏝🛰.
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