When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 or IPv6 address. The former could look like 117.84.152.193
while the latter could be 2000:2f54:1cc8:5bcc:2c11:4c11:d110:f452
. To verify your address, visit https://test-ipv6.com/. Communicating these addresses, as well as MAC addresses like c5:23:9d:8e:81:24
, can be challenging for non-technical individuals. Furthermore, accessing historical data about these addresses and any associated issues can be difficult.
When you want to visit a website such as https://king.net, your computer utilizes a DNS server to translate the URL’s host (king) and Top Level Domain (net) into an IP address, like 193.185.77.209
. Additionally, your computer and browser transmit their type with every web request, for example: Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; Ubuntu/14.10) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.16
Typically assigned through DHCP, your default gateway, like 192.168.238.6
, is where your computer directs all its outgoing traffic. For a more in-depth look at IPv6
, visit how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/. On Mac or Linux, you can verify this information with the following command:
netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"
0/1 172.18.12.193 UGScg utun3 default 192.168.238.6 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 fe80:2013:2f5c:86d4:4904%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): {42.210.92.35, 160.176.155.34} 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 c5:23:9d:8e:81:24 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 43:c6:4b:77:c2:d3 }
When it comes to sending data to your router, you may be using either a wired connection or a wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
No matter which version of OSX/macOS is currently in use, whether it’s 10.13.4
, 11.0.2
, or 12.3.6
, there are various tools available for troubleshooting connectivity issues. However, the manual actions and scripts available do not provide a series of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes essential, especially for teams that operate remotely and embrace Work From Anywhere (WFA).
A highly beneficial tool for OSX/macOS is sudo wdutil info
, which provides a dump of the current wireless settings to the CLI and can be configured to generate specific troubleshooting logs. Additionally, the sysdiagnose
tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is only relevant to wireless networks, similar to wdutil.
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &
in the background will generate logs in /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz
. For interactive use, you can runsudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose
, which will display a privacy warning. If not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, allowing you to navigate to /var/tmp
or use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G. However, be mindful of the file sizes, which can be around 300MB.
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