How to monitor active network connections in Windows 10? Nowadays we never use our computer offline. Every time we turn on our computer, it usually connects automatically to the Internet. And from the moment it is turned 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 us to connect to the Internet in one way or another in order to continue. That’s why you can monitor network connections in Windows 10 without applications to know what is happening.
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How to monitor active network connections in Windows 10?
You can monitor all the connections that your computer makes, giving us the ability to have all the information about which sites our computer is connecting to, detecting any possible failures early on or finding out why the connection is problematic or slower than usual.
Whether it’s because of the number of connections or because someone is hacking into our computer, there are times when things don’t go as they should. Monitoring our connections from our own computer will give us the ability to anticipate problems and detect them faster.
How to monitor active network connections in Windows 10 using 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 will be able to handle without major complications and that is not known by some users. NETSTAT, this program is available on the command line of our computer, the famous cmd.exe or ‘Command Prompt’ if we have Windows 10.
This is a little known tool for some users but very easy to use. We are going to give you all the instructions and steps to follow so you will not have any problems when it comes to monitoring your connections.
How to open NETSTAT?
The first thing we will have to do is to search 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 more complete tools it is possible that your computer requires you to be an administrator.
Once we enter the command console, we will type netstat and, when we press Enter, we will have a response a list of the connections in progress in our computer in real-time. But we can extend 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 fits best to your needs when you are monitoring network connections in Windows.
All options in NETSTAT
- -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, executables host multiple independent components, and in these cases, the sequence of components related to creating the connection or listening port is displayed. In this case, the executable name is in square brackets, “[]”, at the bottom, above the component you called, and so on until TCP / IP is reached. Note that this option can be time consuming and will fail if you don’t have the proper permissions.
- -e: Shows Ethernet statistics. This can be combined with the -s option.
- -f: Displays fully qualified domain names (FQDN) for external addresses.
- -n: Displays addresses and port numbers in numeric 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 gateways may or may not be associated with an active connection.
- -r: Displays the routing table.
- -s: Shows 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: Displays the download status of the current connection.
- -x: Shows NetworkDirect connections, listeners, and shared endpoints.
- -y: Displays 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 showing the statistics again. If omitted, netstat will display the configuration information once.
In this article, you’ve learned how to monitor active network connections in Windows 10 thanks to these easy steps.
