How Do You Check Common Wifi Internet Issues

Understanding Internet Addressing When it comes to the Internet, you may have a Public IPv4 address such as 44.93.44.100 or an IPv6 address like 2000:24eb:6025:2804:6015:a64e:acfb:8e42. It is possible to verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for individuals who are not technologically savvy, conveying these addresses, or even mentioning MAC addresses like a0:cb:86:9a:c5:5c, can become prone to error and quickly become complex. Understanding Internet Addressing When it comes to the Internet, you may have a Public IPv4 address such as 44.93.44.100 or an IPv6 address like 2000:24eb:6025:2804:6015:a64e:acfb:8e42. It is possible to verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for individuals who are not technologically savvy, conveying these addresses, or even mentioning MAC addresses like a0:cb:86:9a:c5:5c, can become prone to error and quickly become complex.

Understanding Internet Addressing

When it comes to the Internet, you may have a Public IPv4 address such as 44.93.44.100 or an IPv6 address like 2000:24eb:6025:2804:6015:a64e:acfb:8e42. It is possible to verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for individuals who are not technologically savvy, conveying these addresses, or even mentioning MAC addresses like a0:cb:86:9a:c5:5c, can become prone to error and quickly become complex. Furthermore, this does not provide any historical data, especially relevant to past issues.

To access a website such as https://denesik.info, the initial step involves accessing a DNS server to convert the host portion (denesik) combined with the Top Level Domain (info) of the URL into an IP address, such as 3.251.180.6. When making web requests, your computer and browser actually send their type, for example: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT x.y; Win64; x64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0

Understanding the Significance of Default Gateways

The default gateway is typically an automatically configured address via DHCP. You obtain a default gateway like 192.168.164.124 (although they typically end in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size), and this is where your computer sends all of its traffic to be routed onward. For IPv6, there is an in-depth guide available on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, but it is possible to check on Mac or Linux with:

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  192.168.164.124    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:be78:d0fd:811e:285e%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): {226.100.35.207, 158.89.85.160}
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 a0:cb:86:9a:c5:5c
  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 db:3e:8c:c3:aa:ba
}

Troubleshooting Connectivity Issues: Wired vs Wireless

When it comes to sending data to your router, you’ll likely be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.

Solving Problems on Apple macOS / OSX

No matter which version of OSX/macOS you’re using - whether it’s 10.11.6, 11.3.3, or 12.1.6 - there are various tools available for troubleshooting. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a series 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 tool is quite helpful as it provides a dump of the current wireless settings to the CLI and can be configured to generate specific troubleshooting logs. Another comprehensive tool is the sysdiagnose, which can generate a wide range of logs related to wireless, though many are only point-in-time logs just like 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 run, use 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. Keep in mind that the file sizes are approximately 300MB.

Possibly Helpful Videos

Video Title Channel
The Importance of Broadcast/Multicast Filtering in Wi-Fi HD Arjan Koopen WLPC EU Budapest 2016 Wireless LAN Professionals
Apples to Apples: An Analysis of the Effects of mDNS Traffic Bryan Ward WLPC Phoenix 2023 Wireless LAN Professionals
WiFiShark Fu Eddie Forero WLPC Phoenix 2019 Wireless LAN Professionals
Troubleshooting in Higher Ed Stefan Kronawithleitner WLPC Prague 2023 Wireless LAN Professionals
Benefits of WPA3, Enhanced Open, and Easy Connect P. Ebbecke, P. Correll WLPC Prague 2018 Wireless LAN Professionals
Table 1.0 - Video Help



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