If you ever had to figure out how many systems are connected to a network and what IP’s they have then you will find this tip useful. It is also useful to identify any rouge machines on your network if you know how many systems are supposed to be there on that network. Like in case of my home network, where I know the exact no of machines.
There are multiple software out that, that allow you to do this. Some are free, some are very expensive. In my opinion the best one is nmap. It is free, fast and can be scripted.
To find all machines on my LAN (IP Range: 192.168.2.x) I just have to issue the following command:
nmap -sP 192.168.2.0/24
This gives an output like the following when I run it as a normal user:
suramya@Wyrm:~$ nmap -sP 192.168.2.0/24
Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-01-20 00:01 IST
Host 192.168.2.1 is up (0.0018s latency).
Host 192.168.2.5 is up (0.00018s latency).
Host 192.168.2.100 is up (0.00018s latency).
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (3 hosts up) scanned in 2.93 seconds
When I run the same command as root, it gives me additional information that looks like:
Wyrm:~# nmap -sP 192.168.2.0/24
Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-01-19 23:50 IST
Host 192.168.2.1 is up (0.0015s latency).
MAC Address: 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (Cisco-Linksys)
Host 192.168.2.5 is up.
Host 192.168.2.100 is up (0.011s latency).
MAC Address: 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (Intel)
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (3 hosts up) scanned in 3.00 seconds
In this case, as you can see nmap also gives me the MAC address of the machine. 192.168.2.5 is the machine I ran the scan from so I didn’t get any information on that one.
If you want additional details on a system you can issue the following command to get the system to try and identify the OS and services running in detail.
nmap -A 192.168.2.5
It gives an output that looks something like:
Wyrm:~# nmap -A 192.168.2.5
Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-01-19 23:52 IST
Interesting ports on 192.168.2.5:
Not shown: 995 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open ssh OpenSSH 5.1p1 Debian 8 (protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 1024 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (DSA)
|_ 2048 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (RSA)
80/tcp open http Apache httpd 2.2.14 ((Debian))
|_ html-title: Index of /
139/tcp open netbios-ssn Samba smbd 3.X (workgroup: WORKGROUP)
445/tcp open netbios-ssn Samba smbd 3.X (workgroup: WORKGROUP)
631/tcp open ipp CUPS 1.4
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.6.X
OS details: Linux 2.6.17 – 2.6.28
Network Distance: 0 hops
Service Info: OS: LinuxHost script results:
additional information on the server
Hope you also find this useful.
– Suramya