How Do You Test Common Wifi No Access
Understanding Internet Protocol Addresses
When using the Internet, you are assigned a unique public IP address, such as the IPv4 address 13.112.164.23 or the IPv6 address 2000:bd98:3c9a:4f8b:d740:e2fc:1d42:3378. To verify this information, you can visit https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for those who are not well-versed in technology, communicating these addresses or MAC addresses like e1:be:90:79:cb:c7 can quickly become error-prone and complex. Furthermore, this approach does not provide historical data, especially from past incidents.
Navigating the World Wide Web
Accessing a website, such as https://borer.co, involves initially contacting a DNS server to convert the host section (borer) and the Top Level Domain (co) of the URL into an IP address, such as 1.176.237.87. Whenever making web requests, your computer and browser also transmit their type, for example: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; AOL 9.7; AOLBuild 4343.19; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; FunWebProducts)
The Significance of Default Gateways
Your default gateway is typically an automatically assigned address through DHCP, such as 172.18.189.167 (commonly ending in .1 or .254 based on the scope size). This is where your computer channels all its traffic for further routing. For IPv6, you can refer to our in-depth guide on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, or alternatively, verify on Mac or Linux using the following commands.
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 172.18.189.167 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 fe80:368a:143f:e9bd:9544%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): {197.66.74.6, 39.226.127.203}
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 e1:be:90:79:cb:c7
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 2b:bc:0a:6f:c3:bf
}
Fixing Connectivity Issues for Wired or Wireless Networks
When it comes to transmitting data, you may be using either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer to send the data to your router.
Troubleshooting Tips for Apple macOS / OSX Users
Regardless of whether you are using OSX/macOS versions such as 10.11.9, 11.1.8, or 12.3.5, there are various troubleshooting tools available. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a series of correlated values over time, making automated remote troubleshooting particularly beneficial for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Utilizing Built-in Scripts for Assistance
An effective tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info command, which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI and can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Moreover, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although many are only relevant to wireless settings at a specific point in time, similar to wdutil.
To run sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & in the background and write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz, or to run it interactively, users can run sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, albeit with a privacy warning. When not run in the background, the user will be prompted to navigate to /var/tmp in Finder or use Cmd+Shift+G to navigate to the path. However, users should be wary of the file sizes, which are approximately 300MB.
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