Using NMAP for Ping Sweep and OS Detection

Ping Sweeping is the process of pinging numerous hosts. In the case of a large set of target IP addresses, one must perform a ping sweep to determine alive hosts that respond to ICMP echo requests. This information can be very useful for a administrator checking his network status.

We can use “nmap” for this purpose.

Step #1. Install NMAP

You can either use the Internet repositories for this purpose and use:

yum install nmap

or you can manuall download the nmap package from this link – http://nmap.org/download.html

Step #2.Use nmap for Ping Sweep

nmap -sP 172.24.0.*

In this case I am trying to use ping-sweep to scan my whole network to find out which machines are LIVE and KICKING right now.

Here is what I get from this simple command.  :P

Ping Sweep in action

NMAP is so wonderful tool in your hands that it can be used for many purposes.

One more very simple, very interesting and very important job that nmap can perform is that it can also give you the OS details of your machines running within your domain.

Using nmap for OS detection:

nmap -O 172.24.0.*

Just give this command and see ALL your machines telling their OS’s to you.

Below is what I get !!

OS Detection using nmap

To watch the video of this post on Network NUTS YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMPr4dvdo74

God Bless !!

Enjoy your EDGE !!