Some Command Prompt Commands: ipconfig, ipconfig /all, ping, net, tracert, nslookup

ipconfig - information about your network configuration
ipconfig /all - detailed information about your network configuration
ping - know if a DNS server is up on your network (internet) and if you are able to comunicate with that DNS server
net - specific for windows networking
tracert - presents the routers between you and a website
nslookup - presents the ip addresses of a website

A Well Illustrated Guide for First Steps with Wireshark

This is a well illustrated guide to Wireshark network protocol analyzer. You can find a list of sample captures  to analyze with Wireshark. This guide also presents about following a TCP stream of a packet, this way analyzing the conversation and the packets sent between you and a particular location on the internet.

Introduction to Wireshark

Wireshark is a analyzing tool for what goes through your network connection (implicitly internet connection). Wireshark analyzes at the packet level. This analyzer can be used for troubleshooting internet connections, for security reasons to see if somebody tries to invade your system or by developers for debugging.

In this introduction you can see how to make visible only http packets and look for some of information about them. Of course you can filter other packets too. You may consider trying Wireshark when visiting http://myinterestsinit.blogspot.com/.