I have a live technical assessment interview tomorrow with a company that works with routers and IoT devices, particularly Wi-Fi and AI-sensing applications. I was told I may need to write a Linux script and then use its output in a Python program. Which networking commands, tools, or general topics would be most useful to review? I'm especially interested in practical commands for inspecting interfaces, routes, connectivity, and network state, along with advice on producing output that Python can parse reliably.
2 Answers
Start with the iproute2 tools, especially `ip`. Commands such as `ip addr`, `ip link`, `ip route`, and `ip neigh` cover interfaces, addresses, routes, and the ARP/neighbor table. A particularly useful feature is that `ip` can emit JSON in many cases, which is much easier to consume from Python than scraping human-readable output. In a script, prefer structured output where available and check exit codes rather than relying only on printed text.
Also review a few basic diagnostic tools: `ping` for reachability and latency, `traceroute` or `tracepath` for the path to a destination, `ss` for sockets and listening services, and `resolvectl` or the relevant DNS tools for name-resolution issues. Be comfortable redirecting command output, handling failures, and passing clean data between a shell script and Python. If time is limited, focus on `iproute2`, exit-status handling, JSON or other stable formats, and avoiding brittle parsing of display-oriented output.
Knowing the `ip` command suite is a good baseline. It’s commonly used for inspecting and troubleshooting Linux networking, and structured output is a strong choice for an assessment.