How Do You Fix Apple Issues
Understanding Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address such as 47.40.47.113 or an IPv6 address like 2000:fa78:eeb8:b03c:cc8a:a573:b3e8:4987. This can be verified at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for those who are not well-versed in technology, conveying these addresses or even mentioning MAC addresses like 09:97:96:8a:96:4d can lead to errors and become complex. Moreover, it does not provide any historical data, particularly for previous issues.
Navigation on the Internet
Accessing a website such as https://corwin-bruen.com involves connecting to a DNS server to convert the combination of the host portion (corwin-bruen) and the Top Level Domain (com) of the URL to an IP address like 242.38.213.189. With every web request, your computer and browser sends its type, for example: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; AOL 9.7; AOLBuild 4343.19; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; FunWebProducts)
Significance of Default Gateways
The default gateway is typically an automatically assigned address through DHCP. It usually ends in .1 or .254 depending on the scale and is where your computer directs all its traffic for routing. For IPv6, a more detailed explanation is available at how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/. On Mac or Linux, you can verify this 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 192.0.0.148 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:ce00:41ce:e923:922d%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): {86.117.112.11, 17.212.158.168}
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 09:97:96:8a:96:4d
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 03:d6:16:23:92:57
}
Resolving Connectivity Issues for Wired and Wireless Networks
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you may be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Troubleshooting Solutions for Apple macOS / OSX Devices
Regardless of whether you are using OSX/macOS 10.15.8, 11.2.8, or 12.1.5, 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 engaged in remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Utilizing Built-in Scripts for Assistance
One useful tool 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 troubleshooting logs. Additionally, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although many are only point-in-time related to wireless, similar to wdutil.
To run sysdiagnose in the background and write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz, use the command sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &. For an interactive version (although there is minimal interaction), run sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose. Be cautious of the file sizes, which are approximately 300MB.
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