Are You Listening to Me

The latest challenge from the Iron Scripter Chairman starts with a simple exercise aimed at PowerShell beginners. It ends with a more complex set of requirements for advanced PowerShell scripters. In between, you can embellish and add as much as you feel comfortable doing. The core of the challenge is based on the Get-NetTCPConnection cmdlet.

The Beginner Challenge

Write a command to display listening and established connections on a computer’s primary IPv4 address. That is, the IPv4 address other than 0.0.0.0, 127.0.0.1, and 169.254.*. You should display:

• the computer name
• the local port and IP address
• the remote port and IP address
• the connection state
• the owning process
• when the connection was created.
• If you are feeling motivated, add a property that shows the age of the connection

You can manually specify the local IP address if you know it. Although it would be better to use another command to retrieve the address.

This is not a one-line challenge. Nor does it really need to be a script. Use as many commands as you need to achieve the task. Once you have that, then you might see if you can turn it into a parameterized script that lets you specify a computer name.

The Advanced Challenge

For those of you with more PowerShell experience, your challenge is based on the requirements outlined above. However, you should create an advanced function that allows you to easily query one or more remote computers. Your output should include everything from the beginner challenge plus:

• the account associated with the owning process
• the path to the associated application

It is expected that you will programmatically discover the appropriate IPv4 address(es). As a bonus, create a formatted table view of your results grouped by computer name. You might need to shorten up some of the headings.

For very experienced PowerShell scripters, there a number of features you could add to your code.

• Assuming you are using PowerShell remoting, filter out your connection to the remote server
• Add a property with a text note about the local port such as DNS or FTP
• Add an optional parameter to attempt to resolve the remote IP addresses to host names
• Create a formatted view with data grouped by local port or remote address

Tips and Suggestions

It should be obvious, but sometimes people need reminders — read full cmdlet help and examples. Be aware that some values may be empty, which is fine. There is no expectation that you are creating a one-line solution. You should leverage the pipeline but there’s no need to get crazy about it.

As always, the Chairman hopes you will post comments with links to your solutions and work.