Recommend program for showing home network IPs?

[Brent94Z]

Hey Guys,

My home network is damn near outta control. LOL I wouldn't be surprised if I have 20 devices connected to my network both wired and wireless. Do you guys know of a good program that I can run on one of my computers which will show the IP address, MAC address, device name, etc. of ALL the devices connected to my network? I used to keep a nice list but it is way outdated and a neat little program that just "shows me" would be much better

I've looked a little via Google but basically wondering if any of you experts can recommend one you've used and are happy with.

Thanks!!!

[Fonceur]

Can't you simply do that from your router?

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

Do you guys know of a good program that I can run on one of my computers which will show the IP address, MAC address, device name, etc. of ALL the devices connected to my network?

This one looks pretty interesting:

http://softperfect.com/products/networkscanner

The download link and a link to online documentation is in the lower right corner of the screen. Don't get suckered in by the giant green download button...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Can't you simply do that from your router?

Most of the routers that I have owned only show this for DHCP devices so that won't show static IPs.

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Can't you simply do that from your router?

Nope

I'm using fixed IP addresses. I remember my older router showed some of my, I think, wireless devices but I have a router supplied by my cable company (Road Runner Lightning takes a special router) and it shows nothing for connected computers.

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

This one looks pretty interesting:

http://softperfect.com/products/networkscanner

The download link and a link to online documentation is in the lower right corner of the screen. Don't get suckered in by the giant green download button...

Thanks! I will check this out and report back if it is worth a darn

[dvd_maniac]

You can also just use the arp command with the -a parameter.
EI: at command prompt type
arp -a


or create a batch file that will open up notebook with all your IP's...
copy/paste the following 2 lines into a text file ip.txt, then rename ip.bat

arp -a >C:\ping.txt
start notepad.exe C:\ping.txt

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

Nope

I'm using fixed IP addresses.

This would be a good reason then to leave the various devices in DHCP mode and do all the IP address configuration on the router. Most DHCP routers allow you to assign fixed IPs to specific MAC addresses. That way all the IP information is in one place (which is what you're looking for) instead of scattered over a dozen different devices (which is what you have now).

If the router your provider gave you doesn't support this, see if you can put it into bridging mode and set up another, more capable router behind it to handle the NAT and DHCP functions.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

You can also just use the arp command with the -a parameter.

That will give you the IPs and MACs of all the devices your PC has communicated with recently. It won't give you everything on your LAN unless you ping everything first. But the whole point is that he doesn't have that list of IPs to ping; that's what he's trying to get.

[Brent94Z]

Greg, "back in the day" I used DHCP and had only a handful of devices. On two different brand of routers, about twice a year on average, for reasons I can't explain, all my devices would end up with different IP addresses than what they originally had. I had "forever" checked in all cases. This probably wouldn't be a problem for many and not even recognized but I was running a server and have some stuff where I had to manually input the IP address for certain devices/computers. Well, when my router would decide to just "redo" everything, it would break a number of things for me and I'd have to spend some time getting all the IP address changed to their "new" addresses.

Pretty much a pain and I think after I did this about 4 times I just switched to using static IP addresses. There are problems with this as well because some devices you CAN'T input your own IP so on these I just set it to DHCP, get the device up and running so I can log into the device, then change the IP and/or just go back to static IP addresses. The Slingbox is like this.

Anyway, this was probably about 10 years ago. Maybe things have changed since then (?) and when you check "forever" in the router setup it now really means FOREVER but I haven't wanted to take the chance to switch back over because I still remember how big of a pain it was to get everything "fixed" after my routers would glitch on me

[Bizarroterl]

If your old router kept the DHCP leases in volatile memory that could explain the problem you saw. Power goes out, and the lease table is wiped.

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by Bizarroterl

If your old router kept the DHCP leases in volatile memory that could explain the problem you saw. Power goes out, and the lease table is wiped.

I don't think that was it because I'd have a number of power glitches here and it definitely didn't do it each time. I think I even put it on a battery backup and after it reset my IPs on the battery backup is when I got fed up and went to static IPs

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

Thanks! I will check this out and report back if it is worth a darn

That program looks to work pretty good. It only gives me the names of my actual computers though and not any devices. I could have sworn I've seen the names of some of my devices come up elsewhere (like a couple IP cameras are actually named) but could be mistaken. This is a good start though. Thanks!

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

It only gives me the names of my actual computers though and not any devices. I could have sworn I've seen the names of some of my devices come up elsewhere (like a couple IP cameras are actually named) but could be mistaken.!

Some of my devices (along with all of my computers) show device/host names. I don't know why the names are missing on some of the other devices. However, I used the "Add Friendly Name" functionality in the software to enter names that make sense to me associated to each device's MAC address.

Maybe we should submit this software to the HTPC Gems -- Great Tools thread?

[nyplayer]

Go to a CMD prompt and type in

arp -a

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Go to a CMD prompt and type in

arp -a

See posts 7 and 9.

[wayner]

I use Angry IP Scanner - it gives results that look like this: (but it doesn't give MAC addresses)


You can download it here: http://www.angryip.org/w/Download

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

Maybe things have changed since then (?) and when you check "forever" in the router setup it now really means FOREVER but I haven't wanted to take the chance to switch back over because I still remember how big of a pain it was to get everything "fixed" after my routers would glitch on me

I'm not talking about leases that never expire. I'm talking about a feature that on my Netgear router is called "Reserved IP Addresses" and allows me to specify that a given MAC address shall always receive a specific, fixed IP address of my choosing, regardless of how long the lease lasts. In every practical sense it's a static IP address that never changes, but one that's assigned by the router through DHCP rather than manually configured on each device separately. It also provides a record, all in one place, of which static IPs go with which devices, even for devices that aren't currently online.

If your router doesn't offer this kind of configuration option, or doesn't preserve it across power cycles, then I'd recommend upgrading to a router that does.

(You should also back up your router's configuration periodically, just like any other important data that you wouldn't want to re-create by hand.)

[Mitch G]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I'm not talking about leases that never expire. I'm talking about a feature that on my Netgear router is called "Reserved IP Addresses" and allows me to specify that a given MAC address shall always receive a specific, fixed IP address of my choosing, regardless of how long the lease lasts.
<snip>
If your router doesn't offer this kind of configuration option, or doesn't preserve it across power cycles, then I'd recommend upgrading to a router that does.

Or see if you can flash your router with DD-WRT which will give you this feature (as well as all sorts of others).


Mitch

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

That will give you the IPs and MACs of all the devices your PC has communicated with recently. It won't give you everything on your LAN unless you ping everything first. But the whole point is that he doesn't have that list of IPs to ping; that's what he's trying to get.

Change 192.168.0 to match you own Network ID.

This will ping all IP addresses on the 192.168.0.0 network segment and create a text file called IPADDRESSES.TXT in C:\, where it will list only the IP addresses that gave a reply.

FOR /L %i IN (1,1,254) DO ping -n 1 192.168.0.%i | FIND /i "Reply">> c:\ipaddresses.txt