The focus here is not to identify software that provides general system monitoring solutions. Home users with a small network or even just a single computer will benefit from the software featured in this article. This type of software is not only useful for network administrators. Network monitoring tools can help to identify issues before they escalate to emergency status. Monitoring processes is not, in itself, sufficient to ensure a smoothly running system. While top (and other alternatives) are useful tools to monitor the running processes on a system, functionality does not extend to network activity. It is is a small open source utility that offers a dynamic real-time view of a running system, allowing users to monitor the processes that are running on a system, and to identify which applications are consuming more resources than they should. With good reason, top is a tool that many users frequently turn to.

Out of the myriad of utilities that are available for Linux, top is a troubleshooting tool that often comes up in conversation.

Htop with network