One of the little things you can do to improve the security of your computer is to check which connections are open and how the network bandwidth is used. In particular, it is important to monitor programs that attempt to communicate on the Internet or other internal networks.From any computer (Windows, Linux or Unix) you can test any open TCP and UDP connections by running the command netstat from the DOS command prompt.
Netstat shows the network statistics and view all incoming and outgoing connections from the computer. The most interesting information is that relating to ip addresses and ports. The port is represented by a fixed but different number for each program that connects to the network. To understand what it means, just think of a street in the city as an IP address and the house number of each building it is the door to a program. IP address + port number make up the socket, which is the complete address.
read all open connections on the computer you can use some programs which greatly simplify this diagnostic operation. Understand if and how programs and applications use the network and exchange data over the internet it is important for identifying viruses and for configuring any routers or firewalls.
1) Moo0 ConnectionWatcher is a simple program, which looks like a ttask manager, which allows you to vsee any TCP / UDP connection performed to and from the computer.
It lets you know which applications are connected to the network and the number of bytes transferred.
Basically, Moo0 ConnectionWatcher is like a graphical version and more user friendly to use the Netstat command.
Moo0 ConnectionWatcher displays the following information: protocol (TCP or UDP), connection status (whether active or listening), process ID, process or program name, local port, remote port, name remote host, connection duration, total number of bytes exchanged, and connection speed.
Le network usage statistics are in real time, then they update automatically with a frequency that can be set manually from the View menu.
Right-clicking on an item in the list opens a menu from which you can disconnect a program, close it or open its path to locate it on your computer.
Although the netstat command is much more powerful and can provide more detailed information, Moo0 ConnectionWatcher is a tool within the reach of the less experienced.
2) You can also use another free tool, Called CurrPorts, to see a list of all TCP / IP and UDP ports currently open on the local computer. It is a portable program and does not need to be installed and, to use it, just extract the downloaded .zip file and run cports.exe.
For each port that lists CurrPorts, information about the process that opened the port will be displayed. These can be selected and closed, or copied the information of a door to the clipboard or saved in an HTML, XML or csv text file. To sort the list by a specific column, just click on the column header.
CurrPorts works with Windows 10 and Windows 7, and there is a separate CurrPorts download for 64-bit versions of Windows.
3) NetStalker is an enhanced version of CurrPorts, which allows you to view all network activity on your computer in real time. Whenever a new program using the internet connection is seen, it displays a message to decide whether to authorize it or not.
4) A third program to monitor the ports in use and the connections TCP and UDP is PortExpert.
PortExpert displays all applications and programs linked to remote addresses, such as the browser or e-mail client.
You can do a whois check on the remote address to find who it is, to open the address in the browser, or to open the process folder.
5) TinyWall to protect the internet access of programs using the internal Windows firewall.
6) Glasswire that monitors and protects your computer's internet connection
Using a tool like these serves primarily a three reasons:
1) If the internet were to go slower than usual, the fault could be a program or, worse, a virus, which consumes bandwidth.
2) If you are connecting to the internet via a router and a program that should be working online refuses the connection, you may need to open the port of this application on the router.
With the connection checker, you can easily read which port this is.
3) If you have installed a firewall and you want to create precise and more stringent rules, you can see all the information you need: port and ip address.
4) Seeing the programs that connect can become useful for balancing the use of internet network bandwidth and managing connection priorities.
Another program to see what programs connect to the internet is TCPEye discussed in another article.
Very important, to monitor the network bandwidth and internet traffic is the tool for Windows Networx that manages to extract all the main information to know who the computer is communicating with.
Finally, I remember the list of programs to solve network and internet connection problems.
See TCP connections ports and internet usage on PC
