How can you display active network connections on a Linux system?

To display active network connections on a Linux system, using tools like ss or netstat is often the most effective approach. The ss command is considered a modern replacement for netstat, providing detailed information about network sockets, including established connections, listening ports, and routing information. It is more efficient and can provide a quicker response due to its ability to gather data directly from the kernel.

netstat, although somewhat deprecated in favor of ss, is widely recognized and used to display network statistics, including current connections, interface statistics, and routing tables. Both of these tools can provide comprehensive information about active network connections, such as the local and remote IP addresses, port numbers, and the state of the connections (e.g., ESTABLISHED, LISTENING).

While other tools such as lsof, which lists open files and the processes associated with them, can also display network connections as part of its output, it is not solely focused on network activities. top is primarily a system monitoring tool that shows running processes and resource usage, not detailed network connection information. Lastly, ping is a utility used to test the reachability of a host on a network and measures round-trip time but does