“The Internet was meant to make the planet a smaller place.” As indeed quoted by Max Waters, this unbelievable invention initiated the journey to digitalization and created a new perspective on virtual intelligence that facilitated a connection beyond geographical boundaries, anywhere on this planet.
One of the backbones to “Internet Infrastructure” through which the entire world is connected is known as Internet Protocol (IP) address. A significant contribution to its creation was made by Vint Cerf, also known as the father of the Internet. Now, to dwell into the practicalities, IP address is simply a way to trace the source, geographical location, or a platform from where the connection was initiated so that it could reach to its predefined destination. However, with increasing digitalization, an increase in digital crimes was bound to happen, which is referred to as “Cybercrime.”
As routerlogin.one reports, to curb this and to ensure the ethical use of the internet system, tracing IP addresses became necessary as a process in law enforcement that works as a guideline for safe usage of the digital network. The intervention of Cyber Law as an apex body became essential to monitor internet activities.
The use of IP addresses eventually gained importance for marketers too. This comparison can be made with how the marketing team executes comprehensive marketing strategies to market their physical product. Similarly, marketers have started tracing IP addresses to reach their target audience. You can also check speedcheck to test the speed of the internet. The leading advertising platform to sell a product or service is through social media, and this brought the attention of the marketers who trace the IP address of the users who visit the websites of their interest.
This IP address is accessible for public viewing as well. Every device connected to a network has a unique identifier for a similar purpose to locate the sender in this analogical data. Listed below are the applications used for tracking:
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SolarWinds IP Address Manager
An excellent option to cater with up to 2 million IP addresses is SolarWinds IP Address Manager. This provides the enterprises and large scale organizations a complete tool to interact with different servers and is compatible with various servers. The application is compact with automatic features, including an IP tracking tool that can trace up to 254 IP addresses for smaller networking installations.
Another means let you scan automatically for any different IP address that is detected by the application and notifies you instantly. It also offers tools such as mismatched DNS records and depleted scopes. It lets you opt for a 30-day trial, which is free of cost for users to test the functionality of the program before you commit to buy.
Despite being loaded with different features, this tracker is still not a complete business solution. This is due to its non-interactive nature with individual servers, and once the error is detected, the user will need to be fixing it manually. You can also check speedcheck to test the speed of the internet.
Advanced IP Scanner
A specially designed IP address tracker to run on Windows operating systems that are available for free and quite simple to use. This tracker allows you to input a range of IP addresses, and the program carries out the scan of all the addresses falling within that range. It records the results along with other informative data such as the MAC address, hostname, and network interface vendor related to every device that it scans.
Another essential action that it serves is that you can open a list of network shares on your workstation with a simple click. It also enables you to remotely start, activate, control, or shut down the existing sessions.
Angry IP Scanner
The name itself reflects the functions it provides to the users. With the use of this scanner, you can tailor your scans according to your convenience. For instance, you can scan specific subnets or within a specified range or an entire network. It is capable of resolving hostnames and MAC address vendors. The most significant advantage of using this tracker is that it integrates with information of NetBIOS and enables you with a list of open ports for the host that responds to a ping scan.
This tracker is a tool that is primarily based on GUI, and thus it’s a command-line based version of this application allowing the admins to bring the capabilities of all the programs into a single script. Exporting the scan results in CSV and XML files is the most effortless conversion.
SoftPerfect Network Scanner
This tracker scans the port and configures the list that has open IP ports to the host that is responding to the scan. It contains information about the network device, MAC address, hostname, and response time.
This is similar to Advanced IP Scanner, as it offers additional features for Windows hosts, like the capability to show all the hidden shares along with a list of the user accounts that are connected to each of the Windows devices. An added function that provides you to send messages to all devices discovered on the network, remote access to computers, and it runs on commands and instructions.
The major drawback of this scanner is that it can be accessed only through the web, runs only on Windows, and it requires the use of Internet Explorer. However, this tool is comparatively more comfortable to use in terms of functionalities. This scanner makes the use of multithreading, i.e., to bits of help in boasting excellent performance per the organization’s network requirement.
It helps with filtering or customizing the results of the scanned network. It will run only the ports specified by you. The significant advantage of using this scanner is that it verifies the access rights for remote resources and export scan results as HTML, text, or XML files by retrieving NetBIOS information.
Conclusion
The selection of the IP address scanner depends on the size of your network. You can choose from plenty of options available for free and open-source, but it is always advisable to rely on a that’s worth investing in.
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