How Do You Understand Wifi Internet Issues
Understanding Internet Protocol Addressing
When using the Internet, you are assigned either a Public IPv4 address such as 167.11.125.95 or an IPv6 address like 2000:572d:fc90:e05c:6f1e:5618:cd0f:4a4b. These addresses can be verified at https://test-ipv6.com/. However, these addresses can be difficult to communicate to those who are not tech-savvy, and the mentioning of MAC addresses like 59:5b:14:d2:c9:ae can make the situation complex and prone to errors. Furthermore, it does not provide historical data.
Navigating through the Internet
Accessing a website, such as https://kuphal.com, involves first contacting a DNS server to convert the host portion (kuphal) combined with the Top Level Domain (com) of the URL into an IP address, for example, 15.162.82.48. Also, the computer and browser specify their type with all web requests e.g. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT x.y; Win64; x64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.
Understanding the Significance of Default Gateways
The default gateway is commonly an automatically assigned address via DHCP, such as 192.0.0.177 (typically ending in .1 or .254 based on the scope size). This is the point to which your computer directs all its traffic for further routing. For IPv6, detailed instructions can be found at how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, and on Mac or Linux systems, the status can be checked with:
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 192.0.0.177 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 fe80:5cb:4920:331f:7e87%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): {61.211.166.49, 75.130.76.167}
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 59:5b:14:d2:c9:ae
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 d0:18:3d:72:16:c8
}
Solutions for Resolving Wired or Wireless Connection Issues
When transmitting data to your router, you may utilize either a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
How to Address Problems on Apple macOS / OSX Systems
No matter which version of OSX/macOS you are running, whether it’s 10.12.1, 11.1.5, or 12.0.1, 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 essential, particularly for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Utilizing In-Built Scripts for Assistance
One extremely useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info, which provides a dump of current wireless settings to the CLI and can 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 related to wireless at a specific point in time, similar to wdutil.
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & in the background will write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz. If you prefer to run it interactively (although there isn’t much interaction), you can execute sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will display a privacy warning. If not run in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, or you can navigate to /var/tmp and use Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to point it to the path. However, be cautious of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.
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