netstat: Power concedes nothing

I’m going to gloss over netstat, much like I did with netcat the other day, and for much the same reason.

There is an immense amount of information on the Intarwebs about netstat, and rightly so. It’s a tool with an impressive pedigree and even more impressive power.

Like a lot of those powerful tools though, the art is in the use of it.

To that end I will avoid further polluting the information age by repeating the same string of examples as can be found elsewhere online. Instead, here are a few pages to get you started — no order of preference implied. …

• LinuxHowtos.org’s explanation;
• TheGeekStuff’s example page (I do better with examples, personally);
• BinaryTides’ illustrated guide; and
• this old but detailed explanation from LinuxJournal.

netstat has been around forever — it’s part of the ubiquitous net-tools suite. So there’s plenty of guidance not only on how to use it, but what the results mean. Don’t be shy, it’s only netstat. 😉