44

I have a bunch of machines on an IP address range which I want to ping simultaneously as a quick and dirty way of telling which ones are switched on. What (free) software can I use to do this?

I'm using Windows Vista.

2
  • 2
    I tried angry ip scanner and free ip scanner and angry seems faster after increasing it's maximum thread count to the range of IPs I was after.
    – Jon Cage
    Sep 24, 2009 at 7:59
  • there's a slight chance this might trip off some kind of security. It might be a better bet to have the machines set to ping a central server at certain intervals, or check at the router.
    – Journeyman Geek
    May 20, 2011 at 0:43

9 Answers 9

31

The quickest way is to use Angry IP Scanner

alt text

I use it for the same way you want to!

9
  • 4
    It is free? I have been using it for years. Sep 23, 2009 at 16:01
  • 2
    Er.. yes it is?
    – Jon Cage
    Sep 23, 2009 at 16:03
  • 1
    That's so good! :D +1
    – Pylsa
    Jun 23, 2010 at 19:54
  • This sets off some Antivirus signatures for "Potentially Unwanted Program". I suggest using NirSoft's PingInfoView instead.
    – Iszi
    Sep 5, 2012 at 17:31
  • @iszi False positive... I still think this is the best program for the job. Sep 5, 2012 at 23:26
49

Nmap is available for Windows:

# nmap -sP 10.0.10.1-100
2
  • 6
    nmap is absolutely a great piece of software
    – Prabhu R
    Sep 24, 2009 at 4:06
  • 2
    on some newer versions of nmap, this is -sn to run a "no port scan", just looking for hosts. Sep 23, 2017 at 15:50
15

I've used this command

for %%i in 200 to 254 do ping 10.1.1.%%i 

in a batch file for a similar reason

4
  • 6
    are you sure it does a simultaneous ping? or is it one machine after another! Nov 29, 2011 at 10:52
  • 1
    agreed, not simultaneous
    – hpavc
    Aug 2, 2013 at 14:02
  • You're right it's sequential rather than simultaneous
    – Col
    Aug 23, 2013 at 8:33
  • 1
    This gives me an error "200 was unexpected at this time". Are you sure this is the right syntax? Mar 10, 2022 at 13:36
12

Free IP Scanner 1.6

Here is the range of IP addresses as you can notice in:

Alt text

11

Instead of manually pinging all IP addresses on your LAN you can do the following:

Open a Command Prompt and type:

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

-n 1 means that only 1 ping packet will be sent to each computer.

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.

You can also add -a to the ping command to resolve all the responding IP addresses to hostnames, but doing so will cause the script to take a considerable time to finish:

FOR /L %i IN (1,1,254) DO ping -a -n 1 192.168.0.%i | FIND /i "Reply">>C:\ipaddresses.txt
2
  • This still pings them one at a time though doesn't it? Angry IP scanner pings all IP's in the subnet at once by launching multiple threads so it takes very little time to complete a whole scan.
    – Jon Cage
    Apr 12, 2010 at 8:38
  • 1
    Works very well in situations where no external program can be installed on the machine, and/or only a text console is available. The only caveat for international users is that the "Reply" string must be changed to whatever the local version of ping is using. Thanks for sharing!
    – Alberto M
    Feb 1, 2019 at 12:55
6

try fping

1
  • It's available on brew for OSX too (incase anyone surfed from Google and missed Windows in the title.)
    – Ross
    Aug 4, 2014 at 18:44
4

You could just write a Bash script that loops through an IP address range and pings them. An example that pings addresses in the range 10.1.1.1 to 10.1.1.255 (inclusive):

for i in {100..255}
do
    ping 10.1.1.$i
done
4
  • I think that "500" wants to be 255 or less? Sep 24, 2009 at 2:41
  • 2
    And I think ping 10.1.1.i probably wants to be ping 10.1.1.$i. Jan 4, 2010 at 6:14
  • 1
    also not simultaneous
    – hpavc
    Aug 2, 2013 at 14:03
  • I belive you will need to pass the "-c" flag. Something like "ping -c1 192.168.1.1". otherwise, you will be stuck fora while.
    – z atef
    Aug 27, 2018 at 2:04
3

Save the below script on the server with an extension of .bat or .cmd and call the file from the command prompt. It should prompt you to enter the IP address range.

Please enter only three octets of the IP address.


@echo off

SET count=0
SET /p subnet=Please enter IP address range (for example, 192.168.0)

:start
SET /a count=%count%+1

cls
ECHO. & ECHO Trying %subnet%.%count% & ECHO.

ping -n 1 -w 1000 %subnet%.%count% >nul  
IF %errorlevel%==0 echo %subnet%.%count% UP >> c:\pingnet.log  
IF %errorlevel%==1 echo %subnet%.%count% DOWN >> c:\pingnet.log

IF %count%==254 goto :eof

GOTO start

Once the command has run, it will create a text file name pingnet.log in the root of C drive. That file should give you a list of used and down (free) IP addresses.

For example:

10.2.214.1 UP   
10.2.214.2 UP   
10.2.214.3 UP   
10.2.214.4 DOWN 

It is pretty simple to run, and it should save you loads of time.

1
  • 1
    This is actually pretty slow compared to angry IP scanner as it does them one at a time. Unless most of the IP range is used, you'd have to wait minutes for this approach to give you an answer.
    – Jon Cage
    Dec 14, 2011 at 7:25
3

Angry IP Scanner is great, but I prefer CLI tools. See if you can get this powershell script running in Vista. https://github.com/webstersprodigy/PowerSploit/blob/Portscan/Recon/Invoke-Portscan.ps1

I also suggest getting access to a Linux CLI by using a linux live cd/usb, dual boot, or a vm in VirtualBox. (Install VirtualBox, add a new vm, install Debian.) A linux CLI is invaluable.

From a linux CLI, run the following:

PING Based Scan

for ip in 172.10.1.{1..254}; do ping -c 1 -w 1 $ip > /dev/null && echo $ip "$(nslookup $ip | grep 'name = ' | awk -F ' = ' '{print $2}')"; done

Adjust for your network range (the '172.10.1' part,) and you're off. This will provide a list of all hosts on the network that respond to ICMP echo (ping) requests, and resolve them against your DNS server.

Note: This is not the most reliable way to test for live hosts as they may have ICMP blocked.

nmap Based Scan

nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24

Note: Nmap is more reliable as it is a port scanner and bases its results on the activity on more than just ICMP responses. It's heavily used by pentesters and is worth learning.

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