How Do You Fix Common Wifi Connectivity
Understanding Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 140.13.228.126, or an IPv6 address, like 2000:806d:20bb:ef41:844:a97f:4709:3688. A tool like https://test-ipv6.com/ can be used to verify these addresses. However, conveying these addresses, or even MAC addresses like 2f:89:a2:2d:7c:c0, to non-technical individuals can be prone to errors and becomes complex quickly. Furthermore, this method lacks historical data, especially when dealing with past issues.
Navigating the World Wide Web
In order to access a web page, such as https://orn.biz, you first connect to a DNS server to convert the host portion (orn) along with the Top Level Domain (biz) of the URL into an IP address, like 204.247.67.96. Your computer and browser transmit its type with all web requests, for example:
Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; Ubuntu/14.10) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.16
The Significance of Default Gateways
The default gateway is typically an address configured automatically via DHCP. For instance, you may receive a default gateway like 192.168.148.184 (often ending in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size), and that is where your computer sends all its traffic to be routed onwards. For a detailed guide on handling IPv6 connectivity, refer to how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/. On Mac or Linux, you can verify this with:
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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 192.168.148.184 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:eada:c330:ad59:d75b%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): {5.153.177.100, 53.148.226.104}
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 2f:89:a2:2d:7c:c0
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 17:b9:ea:7f:a7:3e
}
Identify and Resolve Connectivity Issues
When it comes to sending data to your router, you may be utilizing either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Troubleshooting on Apple Operating Systems
No matter which version of OSX/macOS you are operating on, whether it’s 10.13.8, 11.3.6, or 12.3.5, there are various tools available for addressing connectivity issues. However, the manual actions and scripts often fail to provide a consistent set of correlated values over time. This is where remote troubleshooting automation becomes particularly beneficial, especially for teams that are focused on remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Useful Built-in Applications
An extremely beneficial tool on OSX/macOS is sudo wdutil info, which provides a dump of the current wireless related settings to the CLI, and can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting purposes. Furthermore, the sysdiagnose tool offers a more comprehensive option for generating a wide range of logs (although many of these are only relevant to wireless settings, similar to wdutil).
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & will execute it in the background and create logs in /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz for you. If you prefer to run it interactively (even though there isn’t much interaction), you can executesudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will prompt a privacy warning. When not run in the background, it will open Finder in the proper location, allowing you to navigate to /var/tmp, or use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to direct it to the path. Keep in mind that the file sizes are approximately 300MB.
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