Network utilities are software utilities designed to analyze and configure various aspects of

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

s. The majority of them originated on

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

systems, but several later ports to other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s exist. The most common tools (found on most operating systems) include: * , ping a host to check connectivity (reports

packet loss Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion.Kur ...

and latency, uses ICMP). * shows the series of successive systems a packet goes through ''en route'' to its destination on a network. It works by sending packets with sequential TTLs which generate ICMP TTL-exceeded messages from the hosts the packet passes through. * , used to query a DNS server for DNS data (deprecated on Unix systems in favour of and ; the preferred tool on Microsoft Windows systems). *

vnStat vnStat is a network utility for the Linux operating system. It uses a command line interface. vnStat command is a console-based network traffic monitor. It keeps a log of hourly, daily and monthly network traffic for the selected interface(s) ...

, useful command to monitor network traffic from the console. vnstat allows to keep the traffic information in a log system to be analyzed by third party tools. Other network utilities include: * , displays network connections (both incoming and outgoing),

routing table In computer networking, a routing table, or routing information base (RIB), is a data table stored in a router or a network host that lists the routes to particular network destinations, and in some cases, metrics (distances) associated with th ...

s, and a number of network interface and network protocol statistics. It is used for finding problems in the network and to determine the amount of traffic on the network as a performance measurement. * , which sprays numerous packets in the direction of a host and reports results * allows local or remote configuration of network devices, Microsoft Windows Some usages of network configuration tools also serve to display and diagnose networks, for example: * (on Linux) * (on Unix) * (on Windows) * can display an IP

Main network utilities
List of the most useful network commands

References

Network performance Utility software types

References

Further reading