Introduction

Sometimes the problems a user is facing on his computer are not related to a local operating system resource issue, but rather, to network settings. Many tools can help an administrator troubleshoot network issues; some even come standard in Windows. Unfortunately, a large number of these are too complicated to use, too expensive, or just inadequate. Luckily, in the Winternals and Sysinternals toolboxes, we can find a number of practical and easy-to-use tools that give the right information in a way that is most useful to an administrator.

In this chapter, you will learn how to monitor active socket connections and see which process is doing what on the network. You will also learn how to identify applications running locally that are not performing correctly on the network, and how to troubleshoot Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connections. Finally, you will find out how to get some useful network- and Internet-related information using a few simple Sysinternals tools.

Monitoring Active Network Connections (TCPView, Tcpvcon, TCPView Pro)

Winternals maintains two sets of network tools. Free network tools TCPView, TCPVcon, and TDIMon can be found on the SysInternals.org website. Commercial network tools are found on the Winternals.org website. The commercial tools (TCPView Pro and TCPVstat) are collectively called TCPTools