Apple Computers Not Connecting to the Internet

internetNetworkwifi

So, it started right after Christmas when someone in our family got a brand new MacBook Air. She started having problems connecting to the internet right away, and then the rest of the macbooks (about 4 or so) had trouble connecting too. Up in the top bar at the top of the screen, the wifi icon shows that it is connected to the internet. But the wifi will turn off and on, and we figured out it had to do with the macs connecting to an ipv6 network. Every time it connects to an ipv6 network, it can't display any webpages. But anytime it connects to an ipv4 network, you can access anything that requires internet. Does anybody know about this?

Best Answer

From my understanding, if you have both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity, the Mac operating system will try both and determine which is fastest. The problem is if the IPv6 DNS returns an IPv6 address that can not be reached, then the computer waits until it times out. This happens even it the IPv4 network reaches the web site. The only reasonable solution is to configure IPv6 as Link-local only.

  1. Under System Preferences select Network.
  2. Select the type of connection. (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, etc.)
  3. Select Advanced...
  4. Select the TCP/IP tab.
  5. Select Link-local only as shown below.
  6. Click on OK.
  7. Click on Apply.

111

Link-local only means the IPv6 addressing will work for your Local Area Network (LAN), but is disabled on the Wide Area Network (WAN).

BTW, Microsoft has a fix for this, but only for Windows users. Download "Perfer IPv4 over IPv6 in prefix policies" from this site. There is way to make a similar change to the prefix policies used by the underlying Unix on a Mac. Unfortunately, from my understanding, OS X will ignore the change.

Related Question