I recently came across a great little tool, searching for a way to scan my network for open shares.
The name of the tool is SoftPerfect Network Scanner and it is a nice little tool that can help you scan and detect network devices on your local network. Other than that, it can also help you collect other device information remotely.
How SoftPerfect Network Scanner works
The program is very easy to use. You just enter the IPv4 range you want to scan e.g. 192.168.1.0 to 192.168.1.254 and hit the Start Scanning button. When you start the scanning, the program will start a multi-threaded network scanning end return a list of devices as new devices are discovered. You will get info about IP addresses, host names, MAC addresses and Response Time. If you expand each device, you will see what has been shared on the device. You can also easily select a rescan by right clicking, if you think something has changed since your first scan.
Advanced features
Now that we have scanned the network for devices we can start using the more advanced features. The software gives you the option to retrieve additional options from the devices using remote PowerShell, remote Registry and a lot of other technologies. See picture above. If you have many IP ranges you need to scan often, you can bookmark the ranges making them easy to switch between. Under Options you also have the option to configure scan for open TCP ports. E.g. if you want to scan for open webservers or FTP servers (TCP port 80 and TCP port 21). Another cool feature of this tool is “Live Display” This feature keeps looking for new devices coming online to your network after the scan has completed. This feature can be very useful if you are troubleshooting network issues.
You can see information about more advanced features in the Online User manual here.
Pros & Cons of SoftPerfect Network Scanner
Pros:
- Easy to use software.
- Fast, graphical scan interface that give you the info you need.
- Many options to scan for more additional device info.
- Free version (10 devices limit).
Cons:
- No possibility to print or export scan results.
Download SoftPerfect Network Scanner
If you want to try SoftPerfect Network Scanner yourself, you can download the free version here (7.6 MB). You can also download a portable version (single file), you can easily bring on a USB stick with the need for installation.
If you liked this post, you might also want to check out my download section, where I have shared some of the small tools I have developed myself. They are all freeware.
I was looking for something like that. Every tools is impotent, This will help me a lot. Thanks for sharing.
I’m glad I could help Ali.
This software is an excellent substitute for expensive software in today’s economic times. The software is easy on resources using very little memory, CPU and harddrive space. Softperfect’s Network Scanner is absolutely free with no nagging pop-ups and no malware or spyware.
This is an excellent program that scans not only WiFi but all your Ethernet connections. It’s fairly simple for beginners but has a ton of features for more savvy users. It’s portable so you can scan anywhere with no need to install just by clicking the .exe file. It’s fast and accurate and has no bugs. There are many other scanners, but this is the best network scanner there is. SoftPerfect is ihe only network scanner that you’ll need.
Softperfect NetScanner is just great! Highly configurable, can scan not only for logged-in users, but also finds software versions, BIOS version, RAM info…. Can start a remote assistance session directly from the scan results, and even a remote PowerShell session if your network configuration allows.