Essential Linux Networking Commands Every Developer Should Know

Whether you’re troubleshooting connection issues or setting up a server, these commands will make you more efficient.

As developers, we often take networking for granted until something breaks. Then, in the midst of troubleshooting an urgent issue, we fumble around trying to remember those critical commands that can help diagnose the problem.

I’ve been there too many times. That’s why I’ve compiled this guide to the seven most essential Linux networking commands that every developer should know. Master these, and you’ll be able to quickly identify and solve a wide range of network-related problems.

1. curl

curl is probably the networking tool I use most frequently. It allows you to make requests to web servers, APIs, and other network services using various protocols.

# Basic GET request
curl http://api.github.com/users/username

# Download a file and save it with original filename
curl -O http://example.com/file.zip

# POST request with JSON data
curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"John","email":"[email protected]"}' \
  http://api.example.com/users

Use curl -I to see just the headers of a response, which is perfect for checking status codes and content types without…