searching for IPs

[baby duck monge]

alright, there are lots of really smart people here, so i am hoping someone can answer a question for me:

how would one go about searching out the IP addresses of other computers sharing a network/subnet with them? i know there is some way to do this through terminal, but unfortunately i am not so wise as to know what that way is. i would also welcome solutions that do not involve terminal (but that also do not involve going from computer to computer and checking each one individually for their address). if it helps, i know the range of the addresses, and only need to know specifically which IPs in that range are in use.

thanks a lot!

 

[iLikeMyiMac]

I would check the router. Enter in the ip address of the router in your browser and it should have a page that you can go to to check.

 

[baby duck monge]

I would check the router. Enter in the ip address of the router in your browser and it should have a page that you can go to to check.

i suppose it would be important to mention that i am on a college network and, unfortunately, am without access to such means of figuring out what i want to know.

 

[iLikeMyiMac]

I think typing "findsmb" in terminal would work.

 

[baby duck monge]

I think typing "findsmb" in terminal would work.

thanks so much! that worked perfectly, and you are my hero!! (there should be more happy emoticons so i could use them right now)

 

[daveL]

Weird. I saw nothing in your original post that had anything to do with file system shares. You don't have to be sharing a file system to have an IP address. I guess I missed something. My more general suggestion was going to be the "arp -a" command in terminal.

 

[baby duck monge]

Weird. I saw nothing in your original post that had anything to do with file system shares. You don't have to be sharing a file system to have an IP address. I guess I missed something. My more general suggestion was going to be the "arp -a" command in terminal.

interesting... they both achieved what i was looking for, but the first command was more thorough and neither command returned overlapping information. i don't get it, but i'm not complaining.

 

[iLikeMyiMac]

Weird. I saw nothing in your original post that had anything to do with file system shares. You don't have to be sharing a file system to have an IP address. I guess I missed something. My more general suggestion was going to be the "arp -a" command in terminal.

I'm not too knowledgeable with terminal. findsmb was just a command that I remembered that listed IPs.

 

[daveL]

interesting... they both achieved what i was looking for, but the first command was more thorough and neither command returned overlapping information. i don't get it, but i'm not complaining.

The findsmb command isn't going to show you the IP address of a system that isn't sharing network file system(s). It appears that all the machines on your network are configured for network shares, so the command shows you all the IPs. The arp command would work even if none of the systems were configured for network file sharing.

 

[baby duck monge]

The findsmb command isn't going to show you the IP address of a system that isn't sharing network file system(s). It appears that all the machines on your network are configured for network shares, so the command shows you all the IPs. The arp command would work even if none of the systems were configured for network file sharing.

well i don't think the findsmb got all the IPs on the subnet (in fact, i know it didn't because the arp found some that it did not), but for whatever reason it returned MORE addresses than the arp command. is there any reason that this should happen? judging by what you just said, it seems like that is strange behavior.

 

[daveL]

well i don't think the findsmb got all the IPs on the subnet (in fact, i know it didn't because the arp found some that it did not), but for whatever reason it returned MORE addresses than the arp command. is there any reason that this should happen? judging by what you just said, it seems like that is strange behavior.

There may be systems that haven't been active for a while, so their 'arp' entries have expired in arp's cache. The purpose of arp is to map the hardware ethernet (MAC) address of the network interface to the IP address. You can 'ping' your network's broadcast address, and then run 'arp -a'; this should give you a full list, unless some machines are ignoring 'pings'. It seems 'findsmb' actively sends SMB name queries on the network, so you'll see any system that responded to the query.

 

[Sweetfeld28]

interesting... they both achieved what i was looking for, but the first command was more thorough and neither command returned overlapping information. i don't get it, but i'm not complaining.

Heres a simple way to find your current IP address:

This site will tell you some valuable info. http://www.ipchicken.com/

Sorry, i thought you wanted to know what your IP was and not a big group of IPs. I guess the only way this website would be of help to you would be to go from computer to computer; which isn't what you want to do. My bad.