Home Network Software Help

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The more computers you have connected to your home network, the bigger your need for good tools to manage that network. Recently, I had a need to discover the IP address for Ponzi’s machine, and asked the community if they knew of software I could use.

Wirelesspacket told me immediately about a program he uses from Softpedia called Network Scanner. This is a free tool, which is an excellent ’selling’ point for me.

I needed to find out the IP address of Ponzi’s machine so I could connect to it via VNC. This tool got all the information for me quickly and easily. I just had to open it, input a range of IP addresses, and click the “start scanning” button. Shortly, an excellent list of all the machines on my network was displayed before me. Not only did I get the IP address I needed, this tool also can show me much more:

• Detects hardware (MAC) addresses
• Detects hidden shared folders (normally invisible on the network) and write accessible shares
• Detects your internal and external IP addresses
• Scans for listening TCP ports and SNMP services

The only drawback to this tool is that it is only Windows compatible. If there is an equivalent that you know of which works on OS X, I’d love to know about it.

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