Using nmap to quickly ping all hosts in an address range
At $WORK, the subnet we use for some of our workstations and test boxes was only recently setup with DHCP. Previously, we’d used IP-by-Whiteboard in the office. As a result, most of the recent machines use DHCP, but there are a few older ones still around using static addresses. I recently had to add a new machine, so I had to go through the process of finding out which IPs are in use and which aren’t (since some aren’t in DHCP).
I decided to be good and update DHCP with records for all machines in the subnet, whether they’re actually using DHCP or not. There’s a quick way to do this with nmap using the options for ping scan (-sP) and always resolve DNS (-R):
nmap -sP -R 172.16.43.129-159
Host ar01-hill-hill.example.com (172.16.43.129) appears to be up. MAC Address: 00:11:BC:7D:28:0A (Cisco Systems) Host ccf-hill019-1.example.com (172.16.43.130) appears to be up. MAC Address: 00:00:AA:63:54:BB (Xerox) Host ccf-hill019-2.example.com (172.16.43.131) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-3.example.com (172.16.43.132) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-4.example.com (172.16.43.133) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-5.example.com (172.16.43.134) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-6.example.com (172.16.43.135) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-7.example.com (172.16.43.136) appears to be up. Host speakeasy.example.com (172.16.43.137) appears to be up. MAC Address: 00:17:A4:13:EB:57 (Global Data Services) Host ccf-hill019-9.example.com (172.16.43.138) appears to be up. MAC Address: 00:17:A4:13:E8:17 (Global Data Services) Host ccf-hill019-10.example.com (172.16.43.139) appears to be down. Host testmac01.example.com (172.16.43.140) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-12.example.com (172.16.43.141) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-13.example.com (172.16.43.142) appears to be up. MAC Address: 00:0D:29:59:58:00 (Cisco) Host ccf-hill019-14.example.com (172.16.43.143) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-15.example.com (172.16.43.144) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-16.example.com (172.16.43.145) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-17.example.com (172.16.43.146) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-18.example.com (172.16.43.147) appears to be up. MAC Address: 00:1E:C2:0D:C1:98 (Unknown) Host ccf-hill019-19.example.com (172.16.43.148) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-20.example.com (172.16.43.149) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-21.example.com (172.16.43.150) appears to be down. Host lordkris.example.com (172.16.43.151) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-23.example.com (172.16.43.152) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-24.example.com (172.16.43.153) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-25.example.com (172.16.43.154) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-26.example.com (172.16.43.155) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-27.example.com (172.16.43.156) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-28.example.com (172.16.43.157) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-29.example.com (172.16.43.158) appears to be down. Host ccf-hill019-30.example.com (172.16.43.159) appears to be down. Nmap finished: 31 IP addresses (7 hosts up) scanned in 0.892 seconds
As you can see, the results also (very usefully) include MAC addresses, so it’s pretty easy to update DHCP as needed.
