When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 175.148.142.162
, or an IPv6 address like 2000:53de:80ed:7208:973d:3186:66c7:5ad4
. These addresses can be verified at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, attempting to convey these addresses and MAC addresses like 21:6a:94:86:13:a4
to individuals without technical expertise can lead to errors and complexity, with no provision for historical data.
In order to reach a specific web page, for example, https://heathcote.biz, your device initially communicates with a DNS server to translate the host portion (heathcote) and the Top Level Domain (biz) of the URL into an IP address, such as 41.142.8.11
. Furthermore, the web requests transmitted by your computer and browser are accompanied by information detailing the type, such as Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT x.y; Win64; x64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0
Typically, your default gateway is automatically configured through DHCP and is represented by an address like 172.18.181.54
(commonly ending in .1 or .254 depending on scope size). This gateway serves as the point where your computer directs all its traffic for further routing. For IPv6
, a detailed exploration is available at how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/ and can be verified 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 172.18.181.54 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:ef16:1c0:52a6:6522%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): {159.16.59.223, 15.44.189.117} 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 21:6a:94:86:13:a4 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 45:5c:17:ed:d3:98 }
When it comes to transferring data to your router, you may be utilizing either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Regardless of whether you are using OSX or macOS, whether it’s version 10.11.9
, 11.2.5
, or 12.0.4
, there are various troubleshooting tools available. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a series of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes essential, particularly for teams that are engaged in remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
One of the most helpful tools on OSX/macOS is sudo wdutil info
, which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI and can be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Additionally, the sysdiagnose
tool can be used to produce a wide range of logs, although much of it is only relevant to wireless issues, similar to wdutil.
By runningsudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &
, the tool can be run in the background and will write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz
. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can execute sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose
, which will trigger a privacy warning. When not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, or you can navigate to /var/tmp
, or use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to point Finder to the path. However, beware of the file sizes, which are generally around 300MB.
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