When connecting to the internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address such as 102.49.129.252
or an IPv6 address like 2000:1c0:9d9a:8932:19de:610c:e6a1:322
. These addresses can be verified using https://test-ipv6.com/. However, it can be challenging for non-technical individuals to communicate, or even remember, these addresses, as well as MAC addresses such as d0:34:bd:62:b4:97
. Moreover, this method does not provide historical data, particularly when troubleshooting past issues.
Accessing a webpage, such as https://corwin-lynch.com, involves initially reaching out to a DNS server to translate the host part (corwin-lynch) combined with the Top Level Domain (com) of the URL into an IP address, for instance 103.135.120.33
. Additionally, your computer and browser transmit their type along with all web requests, as shown by `Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; AS; rv:11.0) like Gecko
The default gateway is typically an automatically assigned address via DHCP, such as 192.168.188.204
(although they usually end in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size). This is where your computer forwards all its traffic to be routed further. To delve deeper into IPv6
issues, refer to how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/. You can also verify this information on Mac or Linux platforms by following certain steps.
netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"
0/1 172.18.12.193 UGScg utun3 default 192.168.188.204 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 b3:7255:7006:8d95:b6c1:f433:d1b6:81a9%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): {232.244.211.232, 102.105.134.26} 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 d0:34:bd:62:b4:97 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 31:f0:40:03:46:74 }
When it comes to transferring data to your router, you may be using a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Regardless of your OSX/macOS version, whether it’s 10.13.3
, 11.1.3
, or 12.2.6
, there are various tools available for troubleshooting. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a series of correlated values over time. Remote troubleshooting, on the other hand, proves to be valuable, especially for teams that practice remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
One of the useful tools on OSX/macOS is sudo wdutil info
, which provides a dump of the current wireless settings to the CLI and can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Furthermore, the sysdiagnose
tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is relevant to wireless only, similar to wdutil.
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &
in the background 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 prompt a privacy warning. Running it in the background will open Finder in the correct location, or you can navigate to /var/tmp
using Finder with Cmd+Shift+G. However, keep in mind that the file sizes are approximately 300MB.
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