Networking and Pinging - griffinsnest/tech-Jorunal-1 GitHub Wiki

Getting current Network information with ip addr and ifconfig commands

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To get simple information about the current network being used by the machine such as the IPv4, Ipv6, and MAC addresses, the command "ip addr" will help as it will display that information, though the first result (lo) is the loopback adapter or an IP address that is only used by the host itself so don't really look at that one. Under this command, the MAC address appears under the "link/ether" name as the first six bytes that follow under it, the IP4 address is under inet (note that the address ends before "/"), and the IP6 address is under inet6(same thing with "/" here as well). To get more specific information you'd have to download the net-tools package, to know how please look in the page dedicated to downloading packages and apps. Once installed the command "ifconfig" will provide a more thorough response. The addresses are all given under the same names as the previous command but now there is information provided about additional things like RX and TX packets.

How To display the arp cache

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To display the arp cache the command "arp -a" should show the mapping of the upstream routers IP Addresses and MAC Addresses of all systems currently stored in the cache. Along with that, all systems that the current system has successfully pinged will be entered into a table that will map the remote ip address (the destination of your ping) to its actual IP address.