Today it is very rare that we use the computer offline. Every time we turn on the computer, the most normal thing is that it automatically connects to the Internet. And from the moment of powering on, there will be many connections, visible or hidden, that the computer will make. Browsing, playing games, sending emails or downloading files are some of the most common tasks and require that we connect to the Internet in one way or another in order to be carried out. So you can monitor network connections in Windows 10 without apps to find out what’s going on.
You can control all the connections made by our computer will give us the ability to have all the information about which sites our equipment is connecting to, detect any possible failure beforehand or find out why the connection is causing problems or is slower than usual.
Either because of the number of connections, because some that we did not have controlled are using a lot of bandwidth or because someone is connecting to our computer, there are times when things are not going as they should. Monitoring our connections from our own computer will give us that ability to anticipate problems and detect them in time.
NETSTAT
And we will not have to install anything unusual on our computer, we will not use an external application or download any program that will take up more space. We are going to use a simple command that everyone can handle without major complications and which is little known by some users but very useful: NETSTAT. This program whose name comes from the combination of Network plus Statistics is available on the command line of our computer, the famous cmd.exe or ‘Command Prompt’ if we have Windows 10. We can thus monitor connections Networking in Windows.
It is a little known tool for some users but very easy to use , although it is a command console that not everyone dares to touch. If you have never dared to open one of these windows, don’t worry. We will give you all the indications and steps to follow so that you do not have any problem when monitoring your connections.
How to open NETSTAT
The first thing we will have to do is look for ‘Command Prompt’ in Windows 10. We will find it by typing its name in the search area or by going to the Start Menu and displaying the Windows System folder. For the simplest options, we will not need administrator permissions , but if you want to use some of the most complete tools, your team may require you to be an administrator and enter ‘Command Prompt’ as such.
Once we enter the command console, we will write netstat and, when we press Enter, we will have as a response a list of the connections running on our computer at that moment, in real time. But we can expand this information further, adding more commands in the console when doing the search. If we type netstat? in the command console we will find the list of added options as explained below. There are all kinds of options and you will have to see the one that best suits what you need to monitor network connections in Windows.
Every options
- -a: Shows all connections and listening ports.
- -b: Shows the executable related to the creation of each connection or listening port. In some well-known cases, the executables host several separate components, and in these cases the sequence of components related to creating the connection or the listening port is displayed. In this case, the executable name is enclosed in square brackets, “[]”, at the bottom, above the component you called, and so on until TCP / IP is reached. Please note that this option can be time consuming and will fail if you do not have the proper permissions.
- -e: Show Ethernet statistics. This can be combined with the -s option.
- -f: Show fully qualified domain names (FQDN) for external addresses.
- -n: Display addresses and port numbers in numerical format.
- -o: Displays the ID of the owning process associated with each connection.
- -p proto: Show connections for the protocol specified by proto; proto can be any of the following: TCP, UDP, TCPv6, or UDPv6. If used with the -s option to display statistics by protocol, proto can be any of the following: IP, IPv6, ICMP, ICMPv6, TCP, TCPv6, UDP, or UDPv6.
- -q: Shows all connections, listening ports, and non-listening TCP binding ports. Non-listening ports may or may not be associated with an active connection.
- -r: Show the routing table.
- -s: Shows the statistics by protocol. By default, statistics are displayed for IP, IPv6, ICMP, ICMPv6, TCP, TCPv6, UDP, and UDPv6; the -p option can be used to specify a subset of the default values.
- -t: Shows the download status of the current connection.
- -x: Displays NetworkDirect connections, listeners, and endpoints.
- -y: Show the TCP connection template for all connections. Cannot be combined with other options.
- Interval: Redisplays the selected statistics and pauses at intervals of several seconds between each display. Press Ctrl + c to stop the statistics from displaying again. If omitted, netstat will display configuration information once.
Complete monitoring
In other words, if we write netstat -n in the command console, for example, the list of connections that we will find will be more detailed since it will show us the full name of the associated domain.
With all these options and their possible combinations, we will have monitored all our connections in Windows 10 to check them regularly and check that everything works as it should and there are no problems that affect our normal use of the computer. With this extensive information, we will also ensure that no foreign software is causing damage to our connection and to our computer, since we will be able to detect unwanted connections or connections that are not ours. It is also recommended to regularly check with netstat which ports are open as they are the gateway to our computer for possible infections.
Other Commands
There are other network commands that you can use to check if everything is correct, what speed and quality there are, etc.
ping
For example, ping. Ping is one of the most basic and used commands and what it does is diagnose the state, speed and quality of the determined network. Another of the most interesting functions is that it is capable of identifying problems. For it to work, we must ping the console followed by the IP address or URL that interests us.
ping [-t] [-a] [-n count] [-l size] [-f] [-i TTL] [-v TOS] [-r count] [-s count] [[-j host-list ] | [-k host-list]] [-w timeout] [-R] [-S srcaddr] [-c compartment] [-p] [-4] [-6] destination_name
pathping
Pathping will also help monitor the network from Windows 10 to provide us with information about network latency or network loss. What it does is periodically send “ping” to the different routers and calculate statistics for each one.
pathping [-g host_list] [-h hops_max] [-i address] [-n] [-p period] [-q number_queries] [-w wait_time] [-4] [-6] destination_name
tracert
Surely you have ever used it and it helps us determine or know the route of an IP to reach its destination.
tracert [-d] [-h hops_maximum] [-j list_of_hosts] [-w wait_time] [-R] [-S srcaddr] [-4] [-6] destination_name