Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 / CentOS 5 monitor and track TCP connections on the network

Q. How do I track and monitor connection for eth1 public network interface under Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 server?

Ans.You can use netstat command or tcptrack command. Both command can show established TCP connection and provides the ability to monitor the same.

netstat command

netstat command prints information about the Linux networking subsystem. It also works under UNIX and *BSD oses. It can display network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, and multicast memberships etc.

netstat command to display established connections

Type the command as follows:

$ netstat -nat

Output:

Active Internet connections (servers and established)

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address     State

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:2208          0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:52459           0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:10000           0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8080          0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:1521            0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:53              0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:631           0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:3128            0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:25            0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:31323         0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:2207          0.0.0.0:*           LISTEN

tcp        0      0 192.168.1.100:59917     74.86.48.98:291     ESTAB

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:3128          127.0.0.1:49413     T_WAIT

tcp        0      0 127.0.1.1:54624         127.0.1.1:1521      ESTAB

tcp        0      0 127.0.1.1:1521          127.0.1.1:54624     ESTAB

tcp        0      0 192.168.1.100:55914     74.125.19.147:80    ESTAB

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:3128          127.0.0.1:42471     T_WAIT

tcp        0      0 192.168.1.100:56357     74.86.48.98:993     ESTAB

tcp        0      0 192.168.1.100:56350     74.86.48.98:993     ESTAB

tcp6       0      0 :::53                   :::*                LISTEN

tcp6       0      0 :::22                   :::*                LISTEN 

To display client / server ESTABLISHED connections only:

$ netstat -nat | grep 'ESTABLISHED'

tcptrack command

tcptrack command displays the status of TCP connections that it sees on a given network interface. tcptrack monitors their state and displays information such as state, source/destination addresses and bandwidth usage in a sorted, updated list very much like the top command.

Install tcptrack

Redhat (RHEL) / Fedora / CentOS user, download tcptract here. For example download RHEL 64 bit version:

# cd /tmp/
# wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/tcptrack/tcptrack-

1.1.5-1.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
# rpm -ivh tcptrack-1.1.5-1.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

Debian / Ubuntu Linux user use apt-get as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install tcptrack

How do I use tcptract to monitor and track TCP connections ?

tcptrack requires only one parameter to run i.e. the name of an interface such as eth0, eth1 etc. Use the -i flag followed by an interface name that you want tcptrack to monitor.

# tcptrack -i eth0
# tcptrack -i eth1

(tcptrack in action)

You can just monitor TCP port 25 (SMTP)

# tcptrack -i eth0 port 25

The next example will only show web traffic monitoring on port 80:

# tcptrack -i eth1 port 80

tcptrack can also take a pcap filter expression as an argument. The format of this filter expression is the same as that of tcpdump and other libpcap-based sniffers. The following example will only show connections from host 192.168.1.10:

# tcptrack -i eth0 src or dst 192.168.1.10