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Nmap: A Free Tool to Analyze Your Network

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PCQ Bureau
New Update


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Snapshot

Price: Free

Applies to: IT managers

USP:A free tool for conducting a comprehensive scan of your network

Primary Links:http://nmap.org



Search engine keywords: network monitoring































An acronym for Network Mapper, this popular free tool is available for most platforms including Linux, Windows and MAC. Nmap analyzes raw IP packets of your network and provides information about what type of hosts are using your network, what OS is running on the hosts, what all services are running on these hosts, which firewall is in use, which ports are open, etc. We used a Windows 7 machine connected to our local network (LAN) to install Nmap. Once you've installed it you can scan an IP address on the same network and find out details about the host associated with it. In our setup we scanned a machine with Windows and Linux OS. Nmap was able to give correct details about these hosts. One can conduct multiple types of scans on such hosts. The one that we conducted was 'Intense Scan' which showed up details that include open ports of the host, details about the OS, an interesting network map showing how a host is connected to other hosts on network, and the services running on a host. We also tried a scan of a tablet (Android) and smartphone (Blackberry) connected to the same network. The amount of information returned was limited in both cases.



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