Most of the available networking tools are specialized and are mainly of interest to professionals who are maintaining a large network. Many, however are relevant to the Internet and some of these can be helpful to the average PC user. The commands in the first table are generic and in general, with some minor exceptions, apply across each operating system.
Generic Network Utilities | |
Command | Info |
ping <target_name> | Verifies IP-level connectivity. This utility verifies that a host computer can connect to the TCP/IP network and network resources. |
ipconfig /all # Renew IP addr. config ipconfig /renew # Release IP addr. config ipconfig /release | Display TCP/IP configuration information, renew and release DHCP assigned address configuration and register in dynamic DNS or flush the local DNS cache. The *nix equivalent of this command is usually ifconfig |
# Display current ARP entries arp -a # Add a permanent ARP entry arp –s <inet_addr> <eth_addr> # Delete host arp –d <inet_addr> | The arp utility can be used to manually resolve IP addresses to MAC addresses and to modify or display the current ARP cache table. |
# Display current connection and listening ports netstat -a # Display Ethernet stats netstat –e # Displays routing table netstat –r | Display TCP/IP protocol statistics and information about TCP and UDP connection to and from the local computer. |
tracert <target_name> # Do not resolve addresses tracert –d <target_name> | Determine the route that an IP datagram takes to reach a destination. |
For the more advanced users, we can add more powerful commands to our networking toolbox. The below commands are mostly of use to *Nix (in particular Linux) users whereby most of the things can be performed through scripts.
Specific Networking Utilities | |
Command | Info |
# Check if iptables is running service iptables status # Disable iptables service iptables stop | Firewall |
# First IP ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.50.254 netmask 255.255.255.0 # Second IP ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.51.254 netmask 255.255.255.0 | Assign multiple IP addresses |
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:01:02:03:04:05 | Change MAC address |
