Network utility

Tools found on most operating systems include:

ifconfig

For network interface configuration. Available on Unix-like systems. In many Linux distributions, deprecated in favor of iproute2.

ipconfig

Similar to ifconfig. Available on Windows systems.

iproute2

Collection of utilities for network configuration. Available on Linux systems.

ping

Checks connectivity with a host. Reports packet loss and latency. Uses ICMP. Broadly available for many systems.

route

Displays an IP routing table.

netsh

Allows local or remote configuration of network devices. Available on Windows.

netstat

Displays network connections (both incoming and outgoing), routing tables, 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.

nslookup

Queries a Domain Name System (DNS) server for DNS data. Deprecated on Unix systems in favor of host and dig. As of 2006, the preferred tool for Windows.

spray

Sends numerous packets to a host and reports results.

traceroute

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. Broadly available for many systems.

vnStat

Monitors network traffic from the console. It allows to keep the traffic information in a log system to be analyzed by third party tools.