Use command line tool nettop on Mac OS to monitor network traffic. Analyze traffic usage and troubleshoot network issues.
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Mac OS X includes an excellent command-line network utility called “nettop,” which allows users to track all network activity, traffic, and routes from the Mac to the outside world via both local (LAN) and wide area (WAN) connections. If you are unfamiliar with such network tools, you can think of nettop as a network-centric task manager that displays active network connections, sockets and routes, their names, and process ID, connection status, and connection establishment. , waiting or listening, and information about individual process data transfers. It’s a bit like the usual ‘top’ and ‘htop’ commands that display process and resource information, but instead of using CPU and RAM, it displays real-time network transfer information such as packets sent and received, packet size, and transferred data.
netop has a wide range of uses, but it can be especially useful when trying to figure out what Macs use the Internet connection and network connections, what is connected to where, and how much data is transferred, and is also just a good utility for network troubleshooting. However, the command line tools are not for everyone, and for users who want to view similar network information in a more traditional OS X application format, the free Mac application’s Private Eye is an excellent GUI tool that provides similar information.
Nettop allows network traffic and connections
Getting started with Nettop is easy enough. Open the Terminal from the / Applications / Utilities directory and type “nettop” at the command prompt to immediately see active network connections and traffic:
nettop
Scroll down the down arrow key and you’ll soon start identifying processes that you recognize by name, at the same time as the applications or processes you’re currently using.
For example, you may see an active SSH connection along with the IP address you’re connected to, and things are especially busy when you come across web browsers like Safari or Chrome, especially if you’re on a website with AJAX, ads, or cookies. , because nettop shows all communication between the browser and remote servers.
If you want to see the most information, you need to maximize the window size by clicking the green maximize button and consider reducing the font size of the terminal window if you don’t see everything you want. Pressing the P button to set the result displayed by the net to a human readable format is also useful for most of us.
Once you’re on the net, you can adjust the output a bit to see more or less information about certain processes and their online communications. The basic Nettop commands are:
- p – changes in and from human readable form (ie kilobytes and megabytes rather than mere bytes)
- d – show delta number (ie active change in number of packets and not in total packets)
- Up and Down Arrow Keys – Navigate up and down the list
- Right and Left Arrow Keys – Expand or collapse specific processes or routing groups
- q – stop the net
The design is easy to follow regardless of what the attached sample block looks like below:
state packets in bytes in packets, external. 83411 5742633 5438 MiB 112280tcp4 192.168.1.6:64547sample.ip.com:30 Founded 5742633 5438 MiB 112280Google Chrome.99481 26448 6934 KiB 18187tcp4 192.168.1.6:60829181.82-static B 1tcp4 192.168.1.6:544 .am Founded 3253555 KiB 3099tcp4 192.168.1.6:51198ec2-44-11.compute-1.am Founded 3512796 KiB 1366tcp4 192.168.1.6:55222n415s2-in- f1.jj.net:443 Founded 10819 3677 KiB 8917tcp4 192.168.1.622 -in-f82.55n0.net:443 Founded 7981 1866 KiB 3870tcp4 192.168.1.6:50832domain-sample.com:80 Founded 313 9177 B 310tcp4 192 1.6: 65035dfdssdfsd.com: 80 Founded 521 14 KiB 514udp4 *: **: *
You can also view routing table information on the net if you do not want to see specific outlets and processes
nettop -m route
Routing information shows connections from the hardware to the destination IP, for example, you may see en0 (wi-fi) from the local network IP server to the remote server, and you may also see loopback information.
You can also use the -m flag to restrict nettop to show only TCP or UDP connections, nettop -m tcp, and nettop -m udp
Other ways to see similar information from the command line, including lsof, open_ports, and then branching out slightly from the command line, you can use GeekTool with lsof to print a list of live network connections directly over the OS X desktop wallpaper.
In the iOS mobile world, you’ll find similar information using the free online scanning Fing app, which is quite a bit more limited, but still useful enough to use on your iPhone and iPad.
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