If you’ve ever sat in front of a black terminal window, typing commands that make you feel like a software detective, you’re not alone. When I started my company building rugged, reliable terminals for field technicians, network administrators, and even small business teams, I quickly learned that many people who reach out to us don’t just want a device that works—they want to actually understand what’s happening on the network around them, without having to fire up a clunky graphical interface. That’s why today, I’m breaking down how to view network information right in the terminal, sharing tips I’ve picked up over years of working with teams that swear by the speed and simplicity of command-line tools. Terminal
Let’s start with the basics. If you’ve just logged into a terminal, your first move should be to figure out what network interfaces your device is using. Interfaces are the “pipes” your network traffic flows through—think Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi adapters, or even virtual interfaces for VPNs. The go-to command here is ifconfig, though on many modern systems, ip addr has replaced it. Run ip addr in your terminal, and you’ll get a breakdown of every interface, including its name (like eth0 for Ethernet or wlan0 for Wi-Fi), its MAC address, and its assigned IP address. For example, if you see something like inet 192.168.1.100/24 under wlan0, that means your Wi-Fi adapter has an IP address of 192.168.1.100, which is the local address your router uses to talk to your device.
A quick note here: some people get intimidated by the extra details ip addr shows, like the subnet mask or broadcast address. If you just want to confirm your device is connected to the network, you can narrow it down with ip -br addr, which gives a shorter, more readable list of interfaces and their IPs. This is especially useful if you’re working on one of our terminals, which are designed to display this kind of output clearly even in bright sunlight or low light—no squinting at tiny graphics needed.
Once you know your interfaces, the next step is to check if your device can actually reach other networks, and where it’s being routed. That’s what the traceroute command is for. If you run traceroute google.com, it will map every hop your data takes to get from your terminal to Google’s servers, showing how long each hop takes and if any are dropping packets. This is a lifesaver for troubleshooting slow or spotty connections—last year, a client of ours, a small manufacturing team, was dealing with constant downtime on their shop floor terminals. They used traceroute to find that a faulty router in the back office was adding 200ms of delay between the shop and the server room, a problem they never would have spotted by just looking at a Wi-Fi signal bar.
If you don’t have traceroute (some lightweight Linux distributions leave it out by default), mtr is a great alternative—it combines the functionality of ping and traceroute into one real-time tool. Run mtr google.com and you’ll get a scrolling view of packet loss and latency for every hop, which makes it even easier to spot where a connection is failing.
Next up, let’s talk about checking which devices are on your local network. If you’re setting up a new terminal for your office, or need to find a printer or server that’s on the same Wi-Fi or Ethernet, arp -a is the command you need. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) table maps local IP addresses to their corresponding MAC addresses, so when you run arp -a, you’ll see a list of every device on your local network, along with its hardware address. For example, if you see 192.168.1.1 - 00:1a:2b:3c:4d:5e, that’s probably your router’s IP and MAC address. I’ve used this countless times to track down devices that are using up IP addresses without permission, especially when we’re helping clients set up multiple terminals for a single location.
Another tool for scanning local networks is nmap, which is more powerful but takes a little more practice. If you run nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24, it will scan every IP in your subnet (the 192.168.1.0/24 part) and tell you which devices are online. It doesn’t just give you IPs, either—it can guess the device type (like a laptop, printer, or server) and even show open ports on each device. We recommend learning the basics of nmap for any team that uses our terminals for network setup, because it’s way faster than logging into a router’s web interface to check connected devices.
Now, let’s get into port information, which is critical if you’re setting up services like a web server, a file share, or a remote desktop connection. A port is like a door on your device that lets specific types of traffic in or out. To see which ports are open and which programs are using them, two commands stand out: netstat and ss. ss is the modern replacement for netstat, so we’ll focus on that. Run ss -tuln and you’ll get a list of all TCP and UDP ports that are listening for incoming connections, along with their state (like LISTEN meaning a service is waiting for traffic) and the program that’s using them. For example, if you see 0.0.0.0:22 under the LISTEN state, that means SSH is running on your device, which is perfect for remote access to your terminal.
If you want a more detailed view, including which remote devices are connected to your ports, run ss -tua. This will show you all active TCP connections, both incoming and outgoing, along with the source and destination IPs and ports. Last month, a client reached out saying their terminals were running slow, and we used ss to find that a malicious program had opened an outgoing connection to a foreign IP, sucking up bandwidth. That fix was a lot faster than digging through graphical network tools, all because of a simple terminal command.
Let’s not forget about DNS, which is what turns domain names like google.com into IP addresses your terminal can use. If you’re having trouble reaching a website or a server by name, the nslookup or dig commands will tell you which DNS server your terminal is using and what IP it’s returning for a domain. Run nslookup google.com and you’ll see your device’s default DNS server (usually your router or an ISP server) and the IP addresses it’s pointing to. If that IP looks wrong, or if the command times out, it means your DNS settings are off, which could be causing network issues. We’ve had dozens of clients use these commands to fix problems where their terminals were set to a faulty public DNS server, and switching to their router’s local DNS fixed the issue in 30 seconds.
Now, let’s talk about how this all ties into using our terminals. One of the biggest advantages of our devices is that they’re designed for real-world use, where power might be spotty, internet connections might be unstable, and you can’t always carry a laptop with you. All of the commands I’ve mentioned work perfectly on our terminals, and because we use a lightweight, optimized operating system, they load fast even when you’re in a field location or a remote warehouse. For example, a technician working on a construction site can grab one of our terminals, plug in an Ethernet cable, run ip addr to confirm the interface is up, mtr site.server.local to check if the local server is reachable, and get back to fixing the issue in minutes—no need to set up a laptop or wait for a graphical interface to load.
I’ve also seen teams use these commands to monitor network performance over time. If you run ping 8.8.8.8 -i 1 -c 60, it will send 60 ping packets to Google’s DNS server once a second, giving you a clear picture of packet loss and latency over a minute. You can redirect that output to a file with > network_log.txt so you can review it later, which is perfect for tracking down intermittent issues that only happen at certain times of day. Our terminals have enough storage to save these logs, so you can pull them back later to show IT teams or use them for troubleshooting future problems.
One common question we get is: what if I’m connecting to a secure network, or need to check for VPN connections? If you’re using a VPN, the ip addr command will show a new interface, usually named tun0 or wg0 for WireGuard, with a separate IP address for the VPN tunnel. Run ip route to see the routing table, which will show that traffic destined for the internet goes through your regular interface, and traffic for your work network goes through the VPN interface. That’s a quick way to confirm your VPN is working without having to click through a client app.
Of course, no tool is perfect. For beginners, the terminal can feel overwhelming at first, with all the text and no point-and-click. That’s why we build our terminals with easy access to a command cheat sheet, so new users can quickly look up the most common network commands without having to Google them in the field. We also include preconfigured scripts that automate some of these steps, like a script that runs ip addr, mtr 192.168.1.1, and ss -tuln all in one go, giving you a full network status report in 10 seconds.
At the end of the day, knowing how to view network information in the terminal is a skill that saves time, solves problems fast, and gives you more control over your network, no matter what device you’re using. Our terminals are built to make that skill work for you, whether you’re a network administrator, a field technician, or a small business owner managing a few office devices. If you’re looking for a terminal that’s reliable, easy to use, and built for real-world network work, we’d love to talk through your needs. We can help you figure out which model works best for your team, answer any questions you have about command-line tools, and support you every step of the way as you integrate these commands into your workflow.
If you’re ready to learn more or discuss how our terminals can fit your network management needs, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to help you work smarter, not harder, whether you’re in the office, out in the field, or anywhere in between.
Metering Junction Boxes References
- Linux man-pages project. ip(8) – Linux manual page.
- Linux man-pages project. ss(8) – Linux manual page.
- Linux man-pages project. arp(8) – Linux manual page.
- Fyodor. Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning.
- Linux man-pages project. mtr(8) – Linux manual page.
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