Identify process using network traffic

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stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 125

#31277 11-Mar-2009 13:54

I had a good app a while ago that would show which processes were currently using a given TCP/UDP port, and how much traffic it was moving, can't for the life of me find it again. I was trying to identify why a supposedly idle system here was shifting about 50Mb of data every 10 minutes or so and wanted to know what process(es) were using all the traffic so I could fix the problem.

Basically something akin to a realtime netstat -a -n. "Open Ports Scanner".

Any ideas? (Free is good, otherwise I have to go through mindless beaurocracy...)

Ragnor

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Trusted

#200617 11-Mar-2009 14:35

Have a look at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/showtraf/

It doesn't show the process causing the traffic but does show source port etc.

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#200628 11-Mar-2009 15:21

netstat -b will show process names, combine with -a and you can see process names with listening ports.

for a realtime-ish view use something like 'netstat -a -b -n 1' which will not reverse lookup and re-display every 1 second.

you must be using an OS with more holes than swiss cheese.

Sniffing the glue holding the Internet together

dgashby

71 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 12

#200649 11-Mar-2009 16:31

If you're on a Windows platform then Process and Port Analyzer from

http://www.openpages.info/softwares/index.php

might meet your needs, Wireshark is another good option if you're wanting detailed analyse of network traffic but it won't help in figuring out which process is actually generating the traffic

stevenz

2802 posts

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+1 received by user: 125

#200706 11-Mar-2009 20:34

Cheers, looks like an unfortunate downside is that most of the good tools are written to run on XP and Vista breaks pretty much all of them (Winsock changes I assume).

The problem in the end was McAfee's update process, something went wrong and despite the fact it was reporting a successful update, something wasn't taking a note of the fact and every 5 minutes the update server dumped a 58MB update file down the pipe. Not too big a deal over the local network, but got expensive when users insisted on leaving their Telecom wireless card connected all day over VPN.