When using the Internet, it’s common to have either a Public IPv4 address, such as 149.31.11.139
, or an IPv6 address, such as 2000:c0bd:70b2:cc7c:57d7:3a22:dee1:8215
. Verification of this information can be done through https://test-ipv6.com/. Communicating these addresses, or MAC addresses like 71:93:47:e1:a4:c9
, can be complex and susceptible to errors, particularly for those with limited technical knowledge. Furthermore, historical data is not available when addressing past issues.
In order to access a website like https://crooks.net, you make an initial connection to a DNS server to convert the host portion (crooks) combined with the Top Level Domain (net) of the URL into an IP address, such as 227.135.151.1
. Your computer and browser specifies its type with all web requests, for example: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; AS; rv:11.0) like Gecko
By default, your gateway is an address that is usually automatically configured via DHCP. A default gateway, such as 192.0.0.59
(typically ending in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size), is where your computer sends all of its traffic to be routed onwards. For IPv6
, you can refer to our in-depth guide on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/ or utilize Mac or Linux to check.
netstat -rn -f inet | egrep -i "default|0/1|128.0/1"
0/1 172.18.12.193 UGScg utun3 default 192.0.0.59 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:d6a7:f189:e31a:72c1%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): {132.79.4.249, 175.70.94.238} 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 71:93:47:e1:a4:c9 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 79:41:e5:59:92:57 }
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you may be utilizing either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Regardless of your version of OSX/macOS - whether it’s 10.13.4
, 11.0.6
, or 12.0.2
- 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 have adopted remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA) practices.
One useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info
, which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI, and this can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Additionally, the sysdiagnose
tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is only relevant to wireless at a specific point in time, similar to wdutil.
By running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &
in the background, logs will be written to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz
. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can execute sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose
, which will display a privacy warning. When not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, or you can navigate to /var/tmp
using Cmd+Shift+G in Finder. However, be mindful of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.
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