21.6.2000
Coming from the "What's Going On Here" department, Lockergnomie Patrick Piccolo is uncovering his connections. When you check your e-mail, you're establishing a connection with a remote mail server. When you browse the Web, you're connecting with Web servers. And Instant Messaging? Yep -- you're usually hooked up directly to another person's computer. Hrm... that's a lot of Net activity -- is there a way to easily watch what's going on at any given time? Select the 'Run' option in your Start Menu and type: COMMAND (then hit ENTER). Bickity bam! At the prompt, type: "NETSTAT -n 10" (without the quotes). The 'n' switch tells NETSTAT to display IP addresses (even those that ICQ says to hide), and the 10 asks NETSTAT to refresh every ten seconds. That number can be anywhere from 1 to infinity (in theory). Shorten the time when you're watching your connectivity closely (when installing or running software you suspect could be accessing the Internet without permission). Press CTRL+C to stop the infostream.