Advice on Finding Computers And Devices On A Network
Have you tried to find all the different devices on your home or work network? If so this can sometimes be difficult to determine as they vary from computers, printers, scanners, smartphones, routers, NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices and possibly VoiP phones. Well, there are several software applications out there to help. There is one that we here at Affordable Computer Repairs and Service use and that is Angry IP Scanner downloadable from: https://angryip.org/about/
Angry IP Scanner
Angry IP Scanner is free and open-source software. Open-source software has nothing to hide so is generally safe to use but their web-site does say “use it at your own risk”. We have been using this for some years now on customer’s sites and have not had any problems.
It is available for:
- Windows 7/8/10 and in 32/64-bit versions. Java 8 is required on your computer.
- There is an older version which supports Windows 98/ME/2000 and XP
- Mac OS with Java 8 or later installed
- Linux for Ubuntu/Debian/Mint 64-bit and another for 32-bit
- Linux for Fedora/RedHat/Mageia/openSUSE 64-bit
- Other Linux Distributions
Installing IP Scanner
When installing on Windows you may get warnings about viruses or Trojans depending on your anti-virus programs installed already, such as McAfee, Symantic (Norton) and some others. If this happens then it is, what is generally called, a “false-positive”. There are no viruses or Trojans in the software. The source code is available to anyone wanting to check this out for themselves. In their FAQ section https://angryip.org/faq/virus.html this is all explained and I won’t reproduce what they say to keep this article short and to the point, so check this out for yourselves.
Angry IP Scanner Running Speed
As their website says “Angry IP Scanner is a very fast IP address and port scanner”. When run, not requiring any installation, it scans IP (Internet Protocol) addresses in the designated range and then lists them with the results saveable in various formats for later use, such as CSV, TXT and XML. Angry IP Scanner is free and can be freely copied and used anywhere.
Angry IP Scanner is fast to run as it uses a multithreaded approach, as a separate scanning thread is created for each scanned IP address. It is maintained by Anton Keks who is a software engineer and co-founder of Codeborne, an agile software development company.
Versatility
Angry IP Scanner is popular with network and system administrators who need to monitor their networks generally with dozens and up to hundreds of IP devices (computers etc) on their networks which can be a daunting task with different networks in their organisations.
On Angry IP Scanner’s web-site they do state that “while theoretically it (Angry IP Scanner) can be used by crackers (hackers), in fact it was not intended to do so, thus the lack of stealth scanning methods. Please do not consider Angry IP Scanner as a ‘hacktool’ or something similar”.
Conclusion
We have found on a customer’s network this tool saves time and confusion when trying to determine, especially on a new site, where devices are and what they are, especially as many customers are not sure themselves. It has been a great assistance in finding devices that should not be there as well!
Angry IP Scanner is just one of several tools available on the internet for this type of analysis this is just the one that we use and have found very helpful
If you need assistance, then please do not hesitate to contact us here at Affordable Computer Repairs and Service.
