How to Collect Network Information Through Network Utility

Network Utility is a wonderful feature that comes with Mac OS since the first version of the Mac OS, it has so many networking tools, such as “netstat, ping, whois, etc” with this tutorial am going to explain and test every tool of this utility, just make sure that your Mac got an active internet connection, using network utility is good for the basic Mac users because it got a GUI nether than the “Terminal” which it’s all codes.

1. To open “Network Utility” you go this directory “/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/” and then you will find it or you can search for it on the spot light icon, just like the below screenshot.

2. “Info” tab will display the current information of your network adapter such as the MAC Address, IP address, and the link speed, all the info will be displayed just like the below screenshot.

3. “Netstat”, that’s a wonderful tool for every network administrator, as it gives him the option to display a useful network information, just like the below screenshot I had displayed “Routing table information”.

4. “Ping”, you can use the ping option to check the connection status for a specific website, here on the below screenshot am checking the connection between google and my Mac.

5. “Lookup”, this tool is used for getting information about a website or even its IP address, for example, I am looking up for “avoiderrors.net” it will display that the site IP address and after some time it may display where the site is hosted by.

6. “Traceroute”, This tool will describe how the connection is going, and how many hops it will pass on it till it reaches the final destination, just like the below screenshot.

7. “Whois”, With this tool you can a get a useful information about any website such as the registration information and much more, Mac OS Sierra provides you with different whois server.

8. “Finger”, you can use this tool to fetch the current user information, just like the below screenshot.

9. “Port Scan”, this tool will scan the currently available ports of a website or IP address.

Miguel

I started this tech blog back in 2011 as a place to write down processes I took to fix my client systems and network. Now I write some tips and tricks to help others with the tech issues that one might encounter.

You may also like...

1 Response

  1. Jay H. Lindsey says:

    Dear Miguel,

    Thank you for this article on how to use the Network Utility feature for macOs operating systems.

    Sincerely,

    Jason H. Lindsey
    Apple, Inc.