MAC Address Scanner is the free desktop tool to remotely scan and find MAC Address of all systems on your local network. It allows you to scan either a single host or range of hosts at a time. During the scan, it displays the current status for each host. After the completion, you. MAC Address Scanner is a simple software utility which was developed specifically in order to help individuals scan all computers on their network or a host, in order to find out their MAC addresses. See your network and where threats get in. Automatically discover all the elements of your network: computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, printers, servers, virtual machines, routers and switches. Group your devices for better management. Distribute management to different teams and still see everything from one central management dashboard. A MAC address scanner scans the network for IP addresses and their associated MAC addresses. It enables users to scan hosts one at a time or a group of hosts at a time. MAC scanners allow users to find the IP and MAC addresses of devices accessing their network and to trace crucial client information like DNS engagement and hostnames. Determine the network range; Scan all the addresses (except the lowest, which is your network address and the highest, which is your broadcast address). Use your DNS's reverse lookup to determine the hostname for IP addresses which respond to your scan. Or you can just let Python execute nmap externally and pipe the results back into your program.
Network scanning is a necessary task, but it can start off simple and rapidly become more complicated as your business gets larger. Manually finding IP addresses on your network is possible, but why do it yourself when there are so many tools to help you? Not only can network scanning tools help you find IP addresses, but they can also provide extra information for monitoring, troubleshooting, and keeping your network running efficiently.
My top choice for a network scanning tool is the SolarWinds® IP Address Manager, as it works in an intuitive and easy-to-use way while offering a broad suite of tools and functions. It’s more approachable than some of the other tools out there and has a flatter learning curve for figuring out how to get started.
How to Find IP Addresses of Devices on My Network
Curious how to find IP addresses on-network? You may need to know about either static or dynamic IP addresses. If you can access your router, you may be able to simply view the client lists and get information like hostname and MAC address. Or you can use a device connected to the network to ping the network and view the ARP tables. Done manually in this way, you have to do everything through the command line. Use the prompt “ipconfig” on Windows to get network settings, followed by “arp -a” to view IPs plus MAC addresses.
However, this method doesn’t work across subnets. This means that if you have multiple subnets on your network, you have to go through each individual router or subnet to determine the IP addresses within the subnet. It becomes pretty clear as your network scales, manually scanning for IP addresses becomes an extremely complex task. Multiple subnets and an ever-changing string of devices connecting to and disconnecting from the network becomes problematic.
Instead of attempting to manually manage these aspects of your network, I recommend using an IP address manager (IPAM). These tools help you to manage your IP addresses and troubleshoot problems, but they also help you to find all the IP addresses of the devices on your network and determine the status of each one (dynamic, static, available, reserved, etc.). Some tools will also integrate with DNS and DHCP, and all of them will usually present data in a visual, interactive format. Many also allow you to save your network scanning results and present them in spreadsheets or reports.
Best Network Scanner Tools 2020
SolarWinds IP Address Manager
This is my top choice for network scanning software. The SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) with its IP Address Scanner feature is great for both beginner users and small businesses, and expert network administrators and large enterprises. With automated IP address tracking and integrated DHCP and DNS management, you can quite easily monitor your IP addresses and associated network information.
You can also see all your subnets and how they are structured, and which subnets and scopes don’t have much free space remaining. It allows you to flag capacity issues before they become a problem so that IP address issues don’t affect performance. I’ve also found it’s easy to find unused IPs and reclaim them to tidy up my networks.
This IPAM uses a clean and simple interface, without a steep learning curve like some other IP address managers. You can easily assign management or control permissions to other admins or admin groups, allowing you to delegate tasks simply within the IPAM rather than needing to use another tool. The console is centralized, allowing you to see all the relevant information in one place, reducing the potential for error.
I consider the SolarWinds IPAM to be a complete solution, and it’s my choice for an all-round lightweight tool you can use to scan and maintain your network. There’s a free trial available so you can try it out, then level up to gain access to more features and greater scalability.
MyLanViewer
This is another strong business-level contender for network scanner tools. MyLanViewer is an IP and network scanner, as well as a traceroute tool and network monitor. It uses a buddy-list style window to display all of your network computers, including important technical information about each one. It can scan your network to monitor IPs and let you know when any details change. It also supports remote shutdown and other remote functions for each network computer. It can monitor hidden devices on your subnets and discover bottlenecks in your connection with its traceroute tool. I’d say this is a fine choice for business use—it has an easy-to-use interface and is suitable for beginners and advanced users.
Angry IP Scanner
Looking for one of the best free tools? This is an open-source and free network scanning tool, with the ability to scan ports and IP addresses quickly and efficiently. The tool provides a report of data on each device on the network, including NetBIOS, MAC and IP address, computer name, and hostname. Keep in mind that open-source tools do require a bit more know-how on the user’s part and aren’t my usual pick for business use.
Angry IP Scanner can also produce reports in XML, CSV, and TXT format, which is useful for exporting data and other things within your business. Its unique feature is it uses a multi-threaded scanning approach, which uses a separate scanning thread for each IP address. This helps to improve the scanning process and make it more accurate.
Picking the Best IP Scanner
When I want to discover IP addresses on my network or scan for data generally, I tend to lean toward using a network scanning tool rather than trying to do it manually. Many network scanners have simple interfaces, and some go above and beyond in terms of ease-of-use and clean interface appearance. I like using the SolarWinds IP Address Manager, as it contains a pretty hefty solution in a lightweight package, with a free trial for people who want to try it out without commitment.
Recommended Reading
Ultimate Guide to Network Monitoring: If you’re looking for more in-depth information on how to monitor and look after your network, take a look here for a beginner’s guide followed by more expert-level instructions.
The first step of troubleshooting any network problem is by pinging the IP address. Well, for that you need to know the IP address of the device or in cases IP address of all the devices in the network. There are several ways to do this and it entirely depends on the type of OS you are using. So, here are ways to find the IP Address of other devices in your network whether it is Windows, Android, iOS, Ubuntu and macOS.
Find IP Address of Other Devices on Your Network
In this article, we would be dealing with ways to find the private IP address of devices. Since the public IP address of all the devices within the same network remains the same i.e. the IP address of your router. In case, you are surprised by the word public and private IP address, it’s fairly simple. We have a detailed article on the difference between Public and Private IP and how to find the IP address of your own device.
1. How to Find IP Address in cmd For Network
The simplest way to do that in Windows is via the command line. To open the command prompt, type “cmd” on the Start menu. When you see the command prompt, right click on it and click on “Run as Administrator”.
In case you are using windows 10, you can directly run Command Prompt as an Administrator. Just right-click on the Start icon and click on Command Prompt(Admin).
Once you get the Command Prompt window, type the following command.
This will display the entire list of ARP entries. In case you are wondering, ARP is a network utility which maintains a track of all private IP addresses in the network.
Find IP Address of all Devices on Network Using Windows App
Find IP addresses through the command line might be the simplest way but not the most intuitive one. If you are not good with command line then you should download this Nirsoft utility called Wireless Network Watcher. The app has a portable version as well as exe.
As soon as you open the app, it starts scanning your network. Give it some time and it will list up the active connections in your network. The app will display all computers, smartphones and smart homes devices that are currently connected to the network. Along with the Device Name and IP address, it also presents other relevant information like MAC Address, Device Information etc along with its IP Address.
Read: Useful NirSoft Utilities That Every Windows User Should Try
2. Find all IP Address on the Network on Ubuntu
If you are working with Ubuntu or any Unix based OS then following are the ways. You can find the IP address using arp utility on the terminal. To open the terminal, right-click anywhere on the desktop and select “Open Terminal”.
Alternatively, you can also click on the Activities button at the top-left corner. This will bring up a search bar. Type Terminal on it and click on the Terminal icon once it pops up.
Once the terminal window opens, type the following command.
Another intuitive way to do this is through GUI. You have to install a tool called Angry IP Scanner. To install the Angry IP Scanner, you need to add an entry to the APT repository. APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) will then be able to fetch Angry IP Scanner from that particular location. To add the entry to the repository, type the following command
In case you are facing any issues with IP Scan Installation, make sure you have disabled gpg signatures check. You can do that by using the following command.
Once the entry is successfully added, we need to update the apt-get repository. To do that, type the following command
Once the apt repository is updated successfully, we can install the Angry IP Scanner application. Type the following command to fetch and install the application
Alternatively, if you have a browser you can also choose to install from the Angry IP Scanner website directly. Once you launch the app, it will the network you are connected to. Once, it is completed you can see the active connections in your network.
It has advanced tools like opening an FTP, Telnet, SSH connection for any of the IP devices. One thing it lacks is the inability to show hostnames for the devices. Most of the devices come up as N/A in the hostname. This can, however, be found out by using the host command but that takes an extra step.
Read: How to use Angry IP Scanner – Beginners Guide
3. How to Find who is on my WiFi on macOS
On macOS, the steps are quite similar to that of Ubuntu. To find the IP Address of other devices in your network via the command line, we need to first open the terminal. To do that, hit Cmd + Space to trigger Spotlight Search. Type “Terminal” on the search bar. Click on the Terminal icon when the search results populate.
Once the terminal window opens, type the following command.
This will list down the IP’s in your local network with their MAC Addresses. IPs are listed in round brackets followed by the MAC Address.
You cannot see the hostname (name of the computer or smartphone) through the command line. For that, you will have to do a host search separately for each IP. For example, if I need to find the hostname of 192.168.1.105, then I have to execute the following command
host 192.168.1.105
If the commands sound too much work, you can download a freeware from the Mac App Store called LAN scan. This app will list the IP addresses connected to the Local network along with other details like MAC addresses, Vendor etc. This app does not grab he Hostnames like Wireless Network Watcher. In order to get the hostnames of the devices, you need to get the premium variant. It can be purchased at a one-time fee of $7.
Also Read: Find Out Who’s Connected to Your WiFi
4. Android & iOS
On Android and iOS, there is no native way to check the IP Address of all the devices in the network. Hence, you will have to download a third-party app for this. Fing is a powerful network utility available for both Android and iOS which lets you scan your network. All you have to do is open the app and it will automatically start scanning all of the devices on your network. You’ll see all of their IP addresses, their names.
Unlike all the other apps we tested for Windows and Mac, Fing was the only that can figure out your connected devices brands and models. It can even fetch the device icon – wheater it’s an iPhone, MacBook, Router or Printer etc.
Check out Fing (iOS, Android)
Apart from just scanning IPs, you can also ping them or see the open ports on the particular device.
5. Router
One of the most popular ways to check who is connected to your WiFi network is by using your router’s web interface.
In case you have access to the router web interface, you can simply log in to the web portal and check. The web portal address, username, and password are mostly printed behind the router. In case you don’t have physical access to the router, the web portal URL is mostly the PC’s gateway address. To find that, open command prompt and type the following command.
The default username and password depends on the router’s manufacturer. Mostly, the username and password is “admin”. In case this doesn’t work for you, visit the official manufacturer site to get the default credentials.
Once you are logged in, look out for the Wireless or DHCP option. We need to navigate to the DHCP client’s list. On this page, you can see the entire list of devices connected to the network with their Client Name and MAC Address. You can also choose to block particular devices from this interface. To read more about it, check our article on how to block someone from your network.
The good thing about this approach is that you don’t have to install any software because you can access your router from any device. However, the only downside is that you need to know the router’s login credentials. If you are in a work environment then you might not have access to these details to log into the routers admin page. In that case, you will have to use the methods mentioned above.
Locate Mac Address On Network
Final Say
Network Scanner For Mac
Once you have found the IP address of the devices in your network. You can start configuring your network accordingly. You can start assigning Static IP Addresses to your device, configuring SSH, access your computer remotely etc.
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