CompTIA Cloud+ Practice Test 2025 - Free CompTIA Cloud+ Practice Questions and Study Guide

The utility that can show open network connections on both Windows and Linux is netstat. This powerful command-line tool provides valuable information about the network status of a computer, including current network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, and more. By using netstat, administrators can monitor the status of active connections and the listening ports on their systems, which is crucial for diagnosing network issues, monitoring network performance, and ensuring security by identifying unauthorized connections.

Other utilities mentioned serve different purposes. For instance, tracert (known as traceroute in Linux) is used to trace the path that packets take to reach a specific destination but does not show open connections. The ping utility is primarily used to test the reachability of a host on a network and to measure round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. Lastly, ipconfig (or ifconfig in Linux) is used to display the current network configuration of the device, including IP addresses, subnet masks, and gateways, but it does not provide information about open network connections. Thus, netstat stands out as the utility that effectively serves the purpose of showing open connections across both operating systems.