How Do You Fix Wifi Internet Issues
Functionality of Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, individuals may be assigned a Public IPv4 address such as 35.187.92.236 or possibly an IPv6 address like 2000:25e7:f459:5731:2ffe:5734:eb94:cbba. To verify this, you can visit https://test-ipv6.com/. However, attempting to communicate these addresses to those who are not technologically savvy can be prone to errors and become complex rather quickly. Furthermore, this method does not provide any historical data, especially concerning previous problems that may have occurred.
Navigating the World Wide Web
In order to access a website such as https://nikolaus.org, you must first contact a DNS server to translate the host part (nikolaus) along with the Top Level Domain (org) of the URL into an IP address, such as 157.57.236.124. Your computer and browser also communicate their type with all web requests, for instance, Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_3) AppleWebKit/537.75.14 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.3 Safari/7046A194A
Understanding the Significance of Default Gateways
The default gateway is typically an address that is automatically configured via DHCP. This gateway, for example, may be assigned as 172.29.94.222 (usually ending in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size) and is where your computer sends all of its traffic to be routed onwards. For those interested in IPv6, a comprehensive guide can be found on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, but you can verify on a Mac or Linux platform using:
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 172.29.94.222 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 fe80:96e9:9c03:978:c39%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): {4.206.145.137, 217.53.248.0}
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 2d:a9:4a:51:5c:96
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 56:db:6a:6f:83:e8
}
Resolve Issues with Wired and Wireless Connections
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you have the option of using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Solutions for Apple macOS / OSX Users
Regardless of your version of OSX/macOS, whether it’s 10.12.6, 11.6.7, or 12.1.8, there are various tools available for resolving issues. However, these manual actions and scripts fail to provide a set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting shines, particularly for teams that are embracing remote work and the Work From Anywhere (WFA) concept.
Useful Built-in Scripts
One particularly helpful 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 produce a wide range of logs, although many of them are only relevant at a specific point in time, similar to wdutil.
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & in the background will create logs in /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz for you. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can execute sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will prompt a privacy warning. When not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, but you can also navigate to /var/tmp or use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to locate the path. Just be cautious of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.
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