How To Find Devices On My Network

Brief: This quick trick shows you how to find devices connected to your local network in Linux.

Wireless networks take always been a desirable target for wannabe hackers. Wireless networks are also more vulnerable to hacking than the wired ones.

Forget hacking, do y'all ever wonder that someone might be leeching off your hard paid wifi network? Maybe a neighbor who once connected to your network and at present uses it as his/her own?

Information technology would exist nice to check what devices are on your network. This way you tin also run into if in that location are some unwanted devices on your network.

And so you lot might terminate upwards thinking, "how practise I detect what devices are connected to my network"?

I'll show yous how to do that in this quick tutorial. Non only it'southward a skilful thought from security point of view, information technology is also a skilful picayune exercise if you have interest in networking.

We will use both, control line and GUI, way for finding out what devices are connected to your local network in Linux. The process is very simple and easy to use even for beginners.

Before you encounter any of that, let me tell you that your router should also be able to show all the connected devices. Check your gateway ip address and then type information technology in a browser. This is usually the browser interface for your router. Enter the username and countersign and you tin can see all the details and devices connected to the router.

If you don't remember the router countersign or yous don't want to become that way, hither's what else you could do.

A. Using Linux command to find devices on the network

Footstep 1: Install nmap

nmap is one of the well-nigh popular network scanning tool in Linux. Utilise the following command to install nmap in Ubuntu based Linux distributions:

sudo apt-get install nmap

You can easily install it in other Linux distributions besides. It should be in the official software repository.

Stride 2: Get IP range of the network

At present nosotros need to know the IP address range of the network. Use the ifconfig command to find the IP accost in Linux. Look for wlan0 if you are using wifi or eth0 if y'all are using Ethernet.

[email protected]:~$ ifconfig
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 70:f1:a1:c2:f2:e9
inet addr:192.168.1.91 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::73f1:a1ef:fec2:f2e8/64 Scope:Link
UP Circulate RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2135051 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2013773 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1434994913 (1.4 GB) TX bytes:636207445 (636.2 MB)

The of import things are highlighted in bold. As you lot run into my IP is 192.168.1.91 and the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 which means that the ip accost range on my network varies from 192.168.i.0 to 192.168.ane.255.

Y'all may also use ip a command to know your IP address in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

At the same time, I'll recommend you to read about bones Linux networking commands for more than information.

Stride 3: Browse to find devices connected to your network

It is advisable to use root privileges while scanning the network for more accurate information. Use the nmap command in the following way:

[email protected]:~$ sudo nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-09-01 21:59 CEST

Nmap scan report for neufbox (192.168.1.1)
Host is upwardly (0.012s latency).
MAC Address: E0:A1:D5:72:5A:5C (Unknown)
Nmap scan study for takshak-bambi (192.168.1.91)
Host is up.
Nmap scan report for android-95b23f67te05e1c8 (192.168.ane.93)
Host is up (0.36s latency).

As yous tin can run into that at that place are iii devices connected to my network. The router itself, my laptop and my Galaxy S2.

If you lot are wondering near why I used 24 in the above command, yous should know a piddling most CIDR notation. Information technology basically means that the scanning will be from 192.168.ane.0 to 192.168.1.255.

B. Using GUI tool to observe devices connected to network

When I first wrote this commodity, there was no GUI tool for this task. Then I came across a new network monitoring tool being developed for uncomplicated Bone. I suggested including a periodic device scan feature in this tool and the programmer readily agreed.

And then, now nosotros have a GUI tool that does this task. It's called Nutty (last updated in 2019). Simply install this app and run it. It volition periodically scan for new devices on the network and will notify you lot if there is a new device.

This awarding is merely available for simple Os, Ubuntu and hopefully, other Ubuntu based Linux distributions. You can find installation instructions on this detailed article on Nutty.

Oh, you can also log in to your router and see the devices connected to your devices. I let you figure the best manner to observe devices connected to your network.

Creator of It'south FOSS. An ardent Linux user & open up source promoter. Huge fan of classic detective mysteries ranging from Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes to Detective Columbo & Ellery Queen. Besides a movie buff with a soft corner for film noir.