Test Common Wifi Connectivity
Understanding Internet Addressing
When using the Internet, you will be assigned a Public IPv4 address, such as 5.226.248.36, or an IPv6 address, like 2000:eaa0:2191:cafa:8347:6e41:47f9:fb4a. You can verify this information by visiting https://test-ipv6.com/. However, for those who are not well-versed in technology, communicating these addresses, or even identifying MAC addresses like 64:c8:f9:1c:3f:51, can be prone to errors and can become complex. Additionally, this does not provide any historical data, especially for past issues.
Navigating the World Wide Web
In order to access a webpage like https://ratke.io, you must first connect to a DNS server to translate the host portion (ratke) combined with the Top Level Domain (io) of the URL to an IP address, such as 154.109.25.226. When making web requests, your computer and browser sends its type, such as Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; AS; rv:11.0) like Gecko.
Understanding Default Gateways
The default gateway is typically an automatically configured address through DHCP. You are assigned a default gateway, such as 192.0.0.31 (although they typically end in .1 or .254 depending on the scope size), and this is where your computer sends all its traffic to be routed onwards. For IPv6, you can find detailed information in our article how-to-fix-ipv6-connectivity/, or you can check on Mac or Linux using the command:
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 192.0.0.31 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 fe80:3460:a781:ca75:2125%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): {54.186.9.170, 99.132.40.251}
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 64:c8:f9:1c:3f:51
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 24:c3:30:17:f2:92
}
Fixing Issues with Wired and Wireless Connections
When it comes to transmitting data to your router, you might be using a wired or wireless (Wi-Fi) medium at the physical and data layer.
Resolving Problems on Apple’s macOS / OSX Operating System
No matter which version of OSX/macOS you are using - whether it’s 10.11.5, 11.3.9, or 12.0.4 - there are various troubleshooting tools available. However, these manual steps and scripts do not provide a series of correlated values over time. This is where automated remote troubleshooting becomes valuable, particularly for teams that embrace remote work and Work From Anywhere (WFA).
Utilizing Built-in Scripts for Assistance
A very useful tool on OSX/macOS is the sudo wdutil info command, which provides a dump of current wireless-related settings in the CLI and can be configured to generate specific troubleshooting logs. Additionally, the sysdiagnose tool can be used to generate a wide range of logs, although much of it is only relevant to wireless settings at a specific point in time, similar to wdutil.
To run the sysdiagnose tool in the background and generate logs at /var/tmp/<blah>.tar.gz, use the command sudo nohup /usr/bin/sysdiagnose -u &. If you prefer to run it interactively, you can use the command sudo /usr/bin/sysdiagnose, which will display a privacy warning. When not running in the background, it should open Finder in the correct location, or you can navigate to /var/tmp using Finder. However, be mindful of the file sizes, which are typically around 300MB.
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