When dealing with excessive traffic and malicious software it’s advantageous to be informed about the inbound and outbound connections to your computer. These are created via their respective network addresses that indicate which ports were preemptively opened for exchanging data. Once a port is opened, it receives the status “LISTEN” and waits for connection attempts. One problem of having these ports remain open is that your system is then left vulnerable to malware. What’s more, there’s also a chance that Trojan viruses already found in your system may install a backdoor, opening up a corresponding port in the process. For this reason, you should always regularly check the ports opened by your system, a task for which netstat is particularly well suited. Thanks to the fact that you’ll be able to find the diagnosis tool on virtually every system, whether it be Unix, Linux, Windows, or Mac, this program offers a unified solution for all computers and servers.
Possible infections can be caught based on unknown opened ports or unknown IP addresses. In order to obtain an informative result, all other programs, such as your internet browser, should be turned off. This is due to the fact that these are often connected with computers that possess unknown IP addresses. Thanks to the detailed statistics, users also receive information on the packets that have been transferred since the last system start as well as notices of any errors that have occurred. The routing table, which delivers information on the paths data packets takes through the net, can be displayed with the help of the system-specific netstat command.