How Do You Fix Common Wifi Router Issues
Understanding Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, you are assigned with a Public IPv4 address, such as 161.129.169.60, or an IPv6 address, like 2000:f8a4:4a74:a698:ffb7:9ffe:7419:61e. Checking your address can be done through https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for those who aren’t tech-savvy, communicating these addresses or even identifying MAC addresses, like c6:12:f5:4d:20:1f, can be prone to errors and become complex. Moreover, this method does not provide historical data, especially when dealing with past issues.
Navigating the Internet
In accessing a website, such as https://spencer.com, you first contact a DNS server to convert the host portion (spencer) combined with the Top Level Domain (com) of the URL into an IP address, like 35.35.248.29. When making web requests, your computer and browser also send their specifics, such as 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 automatically configured through DHCP, resulting in an address like 10.172.103.189 (often ending in .1 or .254, depending on the scope size). This is the point to which your computer forwards all of its traffic to be routed further. For details on checking IPv6 connectivity on Mac or Linux, you can check our in-depth guide on 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 10.172.103.189 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 fe80:986f:171:be46:2951%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): {180.179.195.243, 52.173.231.125}
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 c6:12:f5:4d:20:1f
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 01:7e:76:a7:b7:fb
}
Addressing Connectivity Issues in Wired and Wireless Networks
When transmitting data to your router, you may be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Resolving Network Problems on Apple macOS / OSX
Regardless of the version of OSX/macOS you are using, such as 10.11.7, 11.3.1, or 12.1.5, there are various troubleshooting tools available. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes crucial, particularly for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Key Built-in Utilities for Assistance
One useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info, which provides a dump of the current wireless settings to the CLI, and can be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Additionally, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, though much of it is only relevant to wireless at a specific point in time, similar to wdutil.
To run sysdiagnose in the background and write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz, use sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &. For an interactive mode, you can run sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose and navigate to the location where the logs are saved. However, be aware of the large file sizes, approximately 300MB.
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