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Network Interfaces

Linux provides a full range of reporting tools for system admins. We’ve already looked at quite a few during the life of Penguin Shell. Today, we’ll take a look at a built in program that will show you the status of all your network interfaces - netstat.

netstat provides a system admin with information on network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, and a full range of other imortant network connection data. By default, netstat displays the active network sockets all address families on your machine. Frankly, running netstat with no options can return so much data it’s almost undecipherable. As with any good Linux program, the best way to use netstat is to narrow the data returned by feeding it the best options for your needs. The netstat man page lists all the available options.

For now, let’s talk about a common use for netstat. The following command will check interface eth0 (the first configured network card):

    netstat -anvi

The output from this command tells the admin several things. First, in the column labeled RX-OK is the number of packets received. The next 3 columns are received error columns, including RX-ERR, RX-DRP (received and dropped) and RX-OVR (received and overrun). The next 4 columns deal with transmission using the noted interface. TX-OK is the number of packets transmitted without problems. As with the RX columns, the TX columns note errors, dropped packets and overruns.

These numbers can be useful for diagnosing network connection problems. By using the above command, you may be able to spot consistenly dropped packets in the transmission or received phase, indicating a problem with the interface.

If you’re having consistent network problems, netstat can be a great tool for starting the diagnostic process.