NetworkConnection

At it's initial release (and the initial purpose of the module) it contains but one Cmdlet, Get-NetworkConnection.

• About
• Installation
• Cmdlets
• Version and Updates

<a name=about>About</a>

The components of Get-NetworkConnection are the DLLs: Kaguwa.Commands.Network.dll and Kaguwa.Network.dll. Their respective projects can be found:

• Kaguwa.Commands.Network
• Kaguwa.Network

This Cmdlet is supposed to mimic the behaviour of netstat.exe -ano but instead delivering an object, The PowerShell way. It began as a function named Get-Netstat that parsed the results from netstat.exe -ano and returned them as a PSCustomObject. This took a lot longer than the original command and didn't get the right feel.

Instead it uses iphlpapi.dll to contact the OS and get the information from there directly, and turning the results into a list of NetworkConnection objects.

I made tests comparing it to netstat.exe -ano.

PS C:\Users\Karl> Measure-Command  { Get-NetworkConnection }


Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 0
Milliseconds      : 5
Ticks             : 51629
TotalDays         : 5,9755787037037E-08
TotalHours        : 1,43413888888889E-06
TotalMinutes      : 8,60483333333333E-05
TotalSeconds      : 0,0051629
TotalMilliseconds : 5,1629



PS C:\Users\Karl> Measure-Command { netstat -ano }


Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 0
Milliseconds      : 14
Ticks             : 142500
TotalDays         : 1,64930555555556E-07
TotalHours        : 3,95833333333333E-06
TotalMinutes      : 0,0002375
TotalSeconds      : 0,01425
TotalMilliseconds : 14,25

##<a name=installation>Installation</a> There are various ways on how to install this module. The basic and simplest way is to clone the project to your local machine and copy it to your user profiles PowerShell module folder:

git clone https://github.com/KarlGW/NetworkConnection.git
Copy-Item .\NetworkConnection\NetworkConnection -Recurse -Destination $env:PSModulePath.Split(";")[0]

<a name="cmdlets">Cmdlets</a>

Cmdlets listed with short information and description.

Get-NetworkConnection

Gets active TCP/UDP connections from the local system.

Parameters

| Param | Type | Mandatory | Allowed Values | | |---------------|------------|-----------|----------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | ProcessName | String[] | False | | Filters the returned list by the provided process names. | | ProcessId | Int[] | False | | Filters the returned list by the provided process ids. | | State | String | False | Established, Listening, Time_Wait, Closing | Filters the returned list by state.

Get-NetworkConnectionHost

Gets host name from IP address and IP address from host name.

Parameters

| Param | Type | Mandatory | Allowed Values | | |--------|------------|-----------|----------------|-----------------------------------| | Host | String[] | False | | Host name/IP address to resolve. |

Examples

To get a complete list of connections.

Get-NetworkConnection

To get a list of connections that are listed as Established.

Get-NetworkConnection -State Established

To get all the connections with with the process name of chrome and svchost

Get-NetworkConnection -ProcessName chrome,svchost

or

"chrome","svchost" | Get-NetworkConnection

You can get more examples from Get-Help Get-NetworkConnection

Get-NetworkConnectionHost

Gets host name from IP address and IP address from host name.

Parameters

| Param | Type | Mandatory | Allowed Values | | |--------|------------|-----------|----------------|-----------------------------------| | Host | string[] | False | | Host name/IP address to resolve. |

Examples

To get the host name and IP address from local host.

Get-NetworkConnectionHost

To get resolve multiple entries.

Get-NetworkConnectionHost -Host 192.168.0.10,codecloudandrants.io,google.com

To resolve multiple entries from pipeline.

"codecloudandrants.io","google.com" | Get-NetworkConnectionHost

To resolve entries from Get-NetworkConnection.

Get-NetworkConnection -ProcessName chrome | Get-NetworkConnectionHost

<a name="version">Version and Updates</a>

v0.2.0

Fixes and features.

• Added new cmdlet Get-NetworkConnectionHost. Works like the *nix command host.
• Added wildcard support for ProcessName in Get-NetworkConnection and removed Regex.
• Added parameter sets so that only one of ProcessName and ProcessId can be used.
• Get-NetworkConnectionHost can take results from Get-NetworkConnection from pipeline.
• LocalAddress and RemoteAddress are now strings.

v0.1.2

Various fixes.

• Fixed ProcessId to only return the correct ProcessId and not everything that begins with that integer.
• Updated manifest and how it loads the module.
• Removed unecessary files that were not used.

v0.1.1

Fixed manifest with description.

v.0.1.0

First release.

<a name="upcoming">Upcoming changes</a>

• Case in-sensitive filtering of ProcessName.
• Support wildcard for ProcessName (uses Regex in the current version).
• Should be able to make DNS-resolution if a parameter is specified.