Top Windows command-line commands

To see what is running on every network interface on a computer you can use ipconfig /all. The command also lets you explore a complete list of the addresses for Internet Protocols (IPs) and Media Access Controls, as well as default gateways, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) statuses, specifications for network adapters and more.

Another ipconfig command can help you in the event you can't connect to an internal network or some set of external resources because the domain name server (DNS) data is corrupt. The command is ipconfig /flushdns and it clears the DNS cache on the computer.

To see what is in the current DNS cache, you can use ipconfig /displaydns. Also, net start dnscache will turn on the cache and, as you would expect, net stop dnscache turns it off. The latter will resolve any issues with an address each time you execute the command.

Other related commands include ipconfig /release, which releases any currently assigned IP addresses, and ipconfig /renew, which takes on new IP addresses from a DHCP server.