How Do You Support Apple IP Settings

The Function of Internet Addressing When using the Internet, individuals may be assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 211.235.106.197, or an IPv6 address, like 2000:447:a984:9739:7653:c53:ece4:a5b. Verification of these addresses can be conducted at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, relaying these addresses and MAC addresses, such as 19:6c:08:7f:9b:76, to those less familiar with technology can be prone to error and become complex. The Function of Internet Addressing When using the Internet, individuals may be assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 211.235.106.197, or an IPv6 address, like 2000:447:a984:9739:7653:c53:ece4:a5b. Verification of these addresses can be conducted at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, relaying these addresses and MAC addresses, such as 19:6c:08:7f:9b:76, to those less familiar with technology can be prone to error and become complex.

The Function of Internet Addressing

When using the Internet, individuals may be assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 211.235.106.197, or an IPv6 address, like 2000:447:a984:9739:7653:c53:ece4:a5b. Verification of these addresses can be conducted at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, relaying these addresses and MAC addresses, such as 19:6c:08:7f:9b:76, to those less familiar with technology can be prone to error and become complex. Furthermore, this method does not provide any historical data, particularly for previous issues that occurred.

In order to access a web page, such as https://grady-smith.io, individuals must first contact a DNS server to convert the host portion (grady-smith) combined with the Top Level Domain (io) of the URL to an IP address, such as 194.217.130.246. All web requests from computers and browsers include the user’s type, for example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; SG; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20101104 Netscape/9.1.0285

The Significance of Default Gateways

The default gateway is typically an address automatically configured via DHCP. A default gateway may appear as 192.0.0.73 (although they generally end in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size), and it is where the computer sends all of its traffic to be routed onwards. For information on checking default gateways for IPv6, refer to our in-depth guide at how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, or use the following command on Mac or Linux:

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  192.0.0.73    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:b599:6e60:3706:7fe3%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): {141.99.245.126, 175.113.219.111}
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 19:6c:08:7f:9b:76
  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 ad:68:cf:a1:e0:52
}

Identify and Resolve Connectivity Issues

When it comes to sending data to your router, you may use either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layers.

Steps for Troubleshooting on Apple Devices

No matter which version of macOS or OSX you are operating on, whether it’s 10.15.1, 11.2.2, or 12.2.3, 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 valuable, especially for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).

Utilize Pre-installed Scripts for Assistance

On OSX/macOS, the sudo wdutil info tool is extremely useful as it provides a dump of current wireless-related settings to the CLI and can also 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 related to the wireless settings and are not continuous over time like wdutil.

To run sysdiagnose in the background and write the logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz, you can use the following command: sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can use sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will give a privacy warning. When run in the foreground, it should open Finder in the correct location, otherwise, you can navigate to /var/tmp or use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to locate the path. However, be cautious of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.

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