While many of these same functions can be provided in a GUI, some people still prefer the command prompt. Most of these command prompt tools are related to networking, however some potential disaster recovery areas are covered as well. What I will be presenting in this article is a list of some of the more common tools and the information they provide. The BIG one.
Ping is very customizable through switches.
This should be your first stop during times of networking problems. Check records, domain host aliases, domain host services, and operating system information by querying Internet domain name servers. When you start Nslookup, it shows the host name and IP address of the DNS server that is configured for the local system, and then display a command prompt for further queries. You can exit the program by typing exit. Once another server is specified, anything entered after that point is interpreted as a host name.