When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address such as 111.210.133.11
or an IPv6 address like 2000:1485:9238:c22e:cc83:5a76:77af:c776
. This can be verified at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, communicating these addresses or MAC addresses like 7d:e7:79:aa:69:e4
can be prone to error and quickly becomes complex, especially for non-technical individuals. Furthermore, it does not provide historical data, particularly for past issues.
To access a website like https://kris.name, you first connect to a DNS server to convert the host portion (kris) along with the Top Level Domain (name) of the URL to an IP address like 230.183.203.180
. Each web request from your computer and browser actually contains its type such as Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT x.y; Win64; x64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0
Your default gateway is typically an automatically configured address through DHCP. You receive a default gateway such as 192.0.0.98
(usually ending in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size), and this is the point where your computer directs all its traffic for further routing. For IPv6
, you can refer to the detailed information in how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, or you can verify it on Mac or Linux with:
netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"
0/1 172.18.12.193 UGScg utun3 default 192.0.0.98 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 fe80:4e7c:e952:5040:884%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): {220.167.5.152, 249.255.159.131} 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 7d:e7:79:aa:69:e4 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 31:81:62:e5:c4:bd }
When it comes to sending data to your router, you may be utilizing either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
No matter which version of OSX/macOS you’re using, whether it’s 10.12.2
, 11.2.6
, or 12.1.3
, there are a variety of tools available for diagnosing issues. However, these manual actions and scripts fail to provide a set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes crucial, particularly for teams that have adopted remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA) practices.
An incredibly useful tool on OSX/macOS is sudo wdutil info
, which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the command line interface (CLI) and can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting purposes. Additionally, the sysdiagnose
tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although many are only relevant to 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 an interactive experience (although there isn’t much interaction), you can runsudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose
and receive a privacy warning. When not running in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, or 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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