12 ss Command Examples to Monitor Network Connections

ss command is a tool that is used for displaying network socket related information on a Linux system. The tool displays more detailed information that the netstat command which is used for displaying active socket connections.

In this guide, we delve in and see how the ss command can be used to display varied socket connection information in Linux.

1. Listing all Connections

The basic ss command without any options simply lists all the connections regardless of the state they are in.

$ ss

List All Connections in Linux 2. Listing Listening and Non-listening Ports

You can retrieve a list of both listening and non-listening ports using the -a option as shown below.

$ ss -a

List All Ports in Linux 3. Listing Listening Sockets

To display listening sockets only, use the -l flag as shown.

$ ss -l

List Listening Sockets in Linux 4. List all TCP Connections

To display all TCP connection, use the -t option as shown.

$ ss -t

List TCP Connections in Linux 5. List all Listening TCP Connections

To have a view of all the listening TCP socket connection use the -lt combination as shown.

$ ss -lt

List Listening TCP Connections in Linux 6. List all UDP Connections

To view all the UDP socket connections use the -ua option as shown.

$ ss -ua

List UDP Socket Connections in Linux 7. List all Listening UDP Connections

To list listening UDP connections use the -lu option.

$ ss -lu

List Listening UDP Connections in Linux 8. Display PID (Process IDs) of Sockets

To display the Process IDs related to socket connections, use the -p flag as shown.

$ ss -p

Find Process ID of Sockets in Linux 9. Display Summary Statistics

To list the summary statistics, use the -s option.

$ ss -s

Find Summary Statistics 10. Display IPv4 and IPv6 Socket Connections

If you are curious about the IPv4 socket connections use the -4 option.

$ ss -4

Find IPv4 Socket Connections in Linux

To display IPv6 connections, use the -6 option.

$ ss -6

Find IPv6 Socket Connections in Linux 11. Filter Connections by Port Number

ss command also lets you filter socket port number or address number. For example, to display all socket connections with a destination or source port of ssh run the command.

$ ss -at '( dport = :22 or sport = :22 )'

Filter Connections by Port Number

Alternatively, you can run the command.

$ ss -at '( dport = :ssh or sport = :ssh )'

Filter Connections by Service 12. Check Man Pages for ss Command

To get more insights into the ss command usage, check the man pages using the command.

$ man ss

Find ss Command Usage and Options

Those are some of the commonly used options that are used with ss command. The command is considered more superior to netstat command and provide detailed information about network connections.