NetWatch is a terminal-based network monitoring application that combines traffic analysis, connection monitoring and diagnostic tools in an interactive dashboard.
It provides information about network interfaces, active connections, processes and captured packets. Its interface is organised into several views, allowing users to move between general traffic statistics and more detailed investigations.
NetWatch can inspect captured network packets and identify common application protocols. It also provides diagnostic information about network connectivity and traffic behaviour.
The program is particularly useful for investigating unexplained network activity, diagnosing connectivity problems and examining communications between local applications and remote services.
Many basic monitoring facilities work without elevated privileges, although packet capture and some diagnostic functions require additional permissions.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Interactive dashboard showing network throughput and interface activity.
- Displays active network connections with associated processes and connection states.
- Monitors network interfaces with traffic rates, totals and historical graphs.
- Captures packets for detailed network traffic inspection.
- Protocol decoding for DNS, HTTP, TLS, ICMP, ARP, DHCP and other common protocols.
- Supports TCP stream inspection and connection timing analysis.
- Provides packet filtering and search facilities.
- Exports captured traffic in PCAP format.
- Displays protocol distributions and packet statistics.
- Network topology view showing connected systems and network infrastructure.
- Connection timeline for examining network activity over time.
- Process-level network activity monitoring.
- Includes connectivity diagnostics and network health checks.
- Supports configurable alerts for bandwidth thresholds and suspicious activity.
- Optional AI-generated commentary for diagnostic findings, disabled by default.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/matthart1983/netwatch
Support:
Developer: Matt Hartley
License: MIT License
NetWatch is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Network 'top' Tools | |
|---|---|
| ntopng | Web-based network traffic monitoring application with an open source version |
| NetHogs | Groups bandwidth by process |
| nload | Real time network traffic monitor for the text console |
| IPTraf-ng | Fork of IPTraf |
| iftop | Displays bandwidth usage on an interface by host |
| ntop | Network traffic probe that shows the network usage |
| IPTraf | Interactive Colourful IP LAN Monitor |
| socktop | Remote system monitor with a rich TUI |
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