Network Scanning with Look@LAN

When the need arises, an administrator must be able to know how many machines are connected on the network, their names and addresses, OSs they run, active services and SNMP

information, etc. To do so without installing complicated software or knowing details of the networks is a Godsend.

Look@LAN is a lightweight and free Windows tool that does it all. Install it on a notebook or

desktop PC and configure it with the target network subnet. It also alerts administrators about new and offline nodes. Best thing is that it doesn't load the network with broadcast traffic. Let's see how to use it on a network. Download

Look@LAN from the website www.lookatlan.com

and install the program on your system. You'll get two shortcuts on your desktop-Look@LAN

and Look@Host. Look@LAN

scans the network and reports the status of your nodes, while Look@Host

just resolves hostnames and IP addresses for specific systems on your LAN.

On launching Look@LAN, you get this profile window. Enter information here to create a new profile for the target subnet you want to scan  Here, give a name to the new profile. Select the interface (subnet) that you want to explore from the 'Interface List' and then click on Next to continue The GUI shows you an analysis of your network by IP address, hostname, running OS, status and SNMP  From the nodes list, double click on any node to do a more detailed scan, and find out which ports are open

Sanjay Majumder