Mac X Network Traffic Command - NETTOP

If you are like any IT professional today, you're concerned about security. Mac OS X has it's own Terminal utility called nettop that monitors incoming/outgoing network connections. This might remind you about Windows "netstat" utility.

Immediately, nettop will output every connection coming in and out of your NIC's. The information will be displayed in Terminal. Nettop can be used with several arguments, shown further down this article, to help reduce cpu load and to inspect other traffic (UDP/TCP) insightfully.

You can have NETTOP running 24/7 and dumping to a text file which I check weekly. Depening how much traffic you generate, you might want to do this to - so anyone already accessing your computer files stealthly you might be able to track (hide NETTOP directory for this reason too)!

ARGUEMENTS:

NAME
     nettop -- Display updated information about the network

SYNOPSIS
     nettop [-nc] [-m ]

DESCRIPTION
     The nettop program displays a list of sockets or routes. The counts for network structures are updated
     periodically. While the program is running the following keys may be used:

     q        Quit

     Up Arrow
              Scroll up

     Down Arrow
              Scroll down

     Right Arrow
              Scroll Right

     Left Arrow
              Scroll Left

     d        Toggle delta output
     r        Redraw screen
     p        Toggle human readable numbers
     e        Expand all
     c        Collapse all
     h        Bring up the help menu
     j        Bring up the column selection menu.  In this mode you can enable/disable columns and change
              their order.

OPTIONS
     A list of flags and their descriptions:
     -m 
              Specify the mode. By default, nettop will monitor TCP and UDP sockets. The following modes are
              supported:

              tcp      Only TCP sockets will be monitored
              udp      Only UDP sockets will be monitored
              route    Instead of sockets, the routing table will be monitored

-n       Disable address to name resolution
-c       Less intensive use of the CPU - draws less often