Support Wifi Internet Issues
Understanding the Functioning of Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, you are assigned a Public IPv4 address such as 109.157.236.129 or an IPv6 address like 2000:a033:4a93:45ea:9f54:e1e9:d3e2:9372. You can verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, conveying these addresses to individuals who are not technically inclined, or even referring to MAC addresses like 98:fd:f6:75:5c:0b, can be prone to errors and become complex rapidly. Furthermore, this method does not provide any historical data, particularly from previous incidents.
Navigating the Online Domain
To access a website such as https://gutkowski-will.net, you first connect to a DNS server to convert the host portion (gutkowski-will) combined with the Top Level Domain (net) of the URL into an IP address like 103.137.24.58. Your computer and browser also include its type in all web requests e.g. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36.
The Significance of Pre-set Gateways
The address of your default gateway is typically assigned automatically through DHCP. You receive a default gateway such as 172.21.149.198 (although they typically end in .1 or .254 based on the scope size) and this is the point to which your computer forwards all its traffic for further routing. For IPv6, detailed instructions can be found in our article on how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/ or you can verify this on Mac or Linux using:
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 172.21.149.198 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 fe80:5027:dda2:a60a:e964%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): {247.26.115.140, 234.0.205.73}
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 98:fd:f6:75:5c:0b
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 80:e8:a4:bf:64:cb
}
Resolve Issues with Wired or Wireless Connectivity
When it comes to sending data to your router, you might be using a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Troubleshooting on Apple macOS / OSX Devices
No matter the version of OSX/macOS you are using, whether it’s 10.12.4, 11.0.3, or 12.1.2, there are various tools available for resolving issues. However, these manual actions and scripts do not provide a set of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes particularly valuable, especially for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Utilize Pre-installed Scripts for Assistance
An incredibly useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info, which provides a dump to the CLI of current wireless settings, and can also be configured to generate specific logs for troubleshooting. Furthermore, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although many are only relevant to wireless settings, much like wdutil.
Running sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u & in the background will write logs to /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz for you. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can execute sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will generate 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 Finder with Cmd+Shift+G to find the files. However, it’s important to be aware of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.
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