Linux Networking Commands Cheat Sheet — 40 Commands You Actually Use
telegra.ph
Diagnostics These are the commands you reach for when something is broken. # Check if a host is reachable ping -c 4 example.com # Trace route traceroute example.com mtr example.com # interactive version # DNS lookup dig example.com dig +short example.com A dig @8.8.8.8 example.com # specific DNS server # Reverse DNS dig -x 93.184.216.34 # What's listening on ports ss -tlnp netstat -tlnp # older systems # Which process owns a port lsof -i :8080 fuser 8080/tcp Interface Management # Show all…

Put together the networking commands I actually reach for regularly. Organized by what you are trying to do rather than alphabetically:

  • Diagnostics (ping, dig, ss, mtr)
  • Interface management (ip addr/route/link)
  • Traffic analysis (tcpdump, nethogs, iftop)
  • Curl tricks (timing, resolve, retry)
  • SSH tunnels (local, remote, SOCKS, background)
  • Firewall (iptables + nftables equivalents)

Nothing obscure — just the stuff that comes up when something breaks at 3 AM.