How Do You Fix Common Wifi Issues
Understanding IP Addressing on the Internet
When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 59.244.70.4, or an IPv6 address like 2000:f436:23dd:36c5:58b0:573e:791c:da76. You can verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, conveying these addresses to individuals who are not technologically savvy, or even specifying MAC addresses like 2b:ca:f0:1a:e7:db, can be prone to errors and quickly becomes complicated. Moreover, this method does not provide any historical data, particularly when addressing past issues.
Navigating the World Wide Web
To access a webpage like https://okon-harvey.io, you initially contact a DNS server in order to translate the host portion (okon-harvey) in combination with the Top Level Domain (io) of the URL into an IP address, such as 50.245.128.5. When making web requests, your computer and browser actually sends its type - for example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; AS; rv:11.0) like Gecko
The Significance of Default Gateways
Typically, your default gateway is an automatically configured address that is assigned through DHCP. You will receive a default gateway such as 192.0.0.155, although they generally end in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size, and this is where your computer routes all its traffic to be forwarded. For IPv6, detailed information on checking on Mac or Linux can be found in our article how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/.
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 192.0.0.155 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 fe80:5740:81de:77e6:9cfa%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): {24.160.245.203, 90.252.7.211}
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 2b:ca:f0:1a:e7:db
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 0f:af:95:05:a7:6e
}
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 Methods for Apple macOS / OSX Users
No matter which version of OSX/macOS you have, whether it’s 10.14.8, 11.0.6, or 12.3.8, there are various tools available for troubleshooting. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a set of correlated values over time, which is crucial for effective troubleshooting. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes essential, especially for teams that operate with a remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA) approach.
Effective Built-in Scripts for Troubleshooting
One extremely useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info command, which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the command line interface, and can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Additionally, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is point-in-time data related to wireless, similar to wdutil.
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & will execute the tool in the background and write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can use sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will issue a privacy warning. When not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, where you can navigate to /var/tmp or use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to locate the files. Keep in mind that the file sizes are approximately 300MB.
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