How Do You Check Wifi Router Issues

Explaining the Functionality of Internet Addressing When using the Internet, you are assigned a unique Public IPv4 address, such as 86.196.38.38, or an IPv6 address like 2000:8d8d:43b3:8fbf:2806:ab18:aaad:8cc2. You can verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, explaining and communicating these addresses, along with MAC addresses like 86:84:a1:c2:fd:b1, to individuals who are not tech-savvy can be prone to errors and quickly become complex. Explaining the Functionality of Internet Addressing When using the Internet, you are assigned a unique Public IPv4 address, such as 86.196.38.38, or an IPv6 address like 2000:8d8d:43b3:8fbf:2806:ab18:aaad:8cc2. You can verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, explaining and communicating these addresses, along with MAC addresses like 86:84:a1:c2:fd:b1, to individuals who are not tech-savvy can be prone to errors and quickly become complex.

Explaining the Functionality of Internet Addressing

When using the Internet, you are assigned a unique Public IPv4 address, such as 86.196.38.38, or an IPv6 address like 2000:8d8d:43b3:8fbf:2806:ab18:aaad:8cc2. You can verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, explaining and communicating these addresses, along with MAC addresses like 86:84:a1:c2:fd:b1, to individuals who are not tech-savvy can be prone to errors and quickly become complex. Furthermore, this method does not provide any historical data regarding previous issues.

Accessing a web page, such as https://larson.org, involves the initial step of contacting a DNS server to convert the host portion (larson) combined with the Top Level Domain (org) of the URL into an IP address, for example, 223.35.182.249. In every web request, your computer and browser transmit their type, indicated as
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; AOL 9.7; AOLBuild 4343.19; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; FunWebProducts).

Understanding the Significance of Default Gateways

Typically, your default gateway is an automatically configured address provided through DHCP. An example of a default gateway is 172.19.90.179 (usually ending in .1 or .254, depending on the scope size), which is responsible for routing all traffic from your computer. For IPv6, you can explore more detailed information on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, and on Mac or Linux systems, you can verify it 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  172.19.90.179    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   fe80:4d80:c87a:5922:2d51%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): {206.213.188.71, 254.96.146.164}
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 86:84:a1:c2:fd:b1
  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 f7:2e:36:5a:c5:53
}

Troubleshooting and Resolving Issues with Wired and Wireless Connections

When transmitting data to your router, you may be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.

Troubleshooting Tips for Apple macOS / OSX Users

No matter which version of OSX/macOS you are using - whether it’s 10.11.2, 11.3.8, or 12.2.5 - 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 adopt remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA) practices.

Utilizing Built-in Scripts for Assistance

A useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info command, which provides a dump to the CLI of current wireless related settings. This command can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting purposes. Additionally, the sysdiagnose tool can be utilized to generate a wide range of logs, although much of the information is only relevant to the wireless connection, similar to wdutil.

Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & in the background will generate logs in /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz for you. If you prefer to run it interactively (even though there isn’t much interaction involved), you can use the command
sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will display 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
Apples to Apples: An Analysis of the Effects of mDNS Traffic Bryan Ward WLPC Phoenix 2023 Wireless LAN Professionals
TIP OpenWifi Demo Network Setup for WLPC Drew Lentz WLPC Prague 2022 Wireless LAN Professionals
The Importance of Broadcast/Multicast Filtering in Wi-Fi HD Arjan Koopen WLPC EU Budapest 2016 Wireless LAN Professionals
178 Why Wyebot with Roger Sands Wireless LAN Professionals
Wireless Association & Authentication Pass-Fail Brian Long WLPC US Phoenix 2017 Wireless LAN Professionals
Table 1.0 - Video Help



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