Watch entry 01 · netprobe24.work
Night watch: know every device on your LAN
Routers hand out addresses and tell you nothing. This site is a logbook of actually looking: three network scanners, run on real home and small-office networks, with notes on what each one caught, what it missed, and when it is worth reaching for.
Tonight's lineup
- Angry IP Scanner — the fast sweep. Runs from a USB stick, clears a home subnet in half a minute, exports a clean table.
- LizardSystems Network Scanner — the share hunter. Finds computers, printers and folders that ping sweeps walk past.
- Engineer's Toolset — the professional kit. SNMP, switch port maps, documentation built to survive a year.
Why keep a watch at all
Networks drift. A guest phone remembered from last summer, a smart plug someone gifted you, the laptop you sold in spring still listed by the router. None of it is dramatic; all of it compounds. A monthly sweep with the results written down turns that drift into a visible line instead of a surprise.
The routine fits in one coffee break and is described in the roster page. If you only read two entries here, make it that one and the verdict log.
What a sweep answers
- Who is on the network right now — address, name where one exists, MAC vendor.
- Which addresses have stopped answering since last month.
- Which ports a specific device leaves open to its neighbours.
- Where the shared folders are and who can write to them (with the right tool).
Rules of the watch
Everything logged here was run against networks their operator had authority over. The same tools pointed at someone else's network stop being maintenance and start being an offence in most jurisdictions. The terms page says it formally.
Entries in this log
- One LAN, three scanners — the same network, same evening.
- The roster — keeping a device list that stays true.
- About — how entries are tested, where images come from.