The first thing you want to do is go about creating an account over at Google Analytics. Why would I want to do that, you ask? Well, in my own experience, the service provides a tremendous amount of data, has a great user interface, is easy to install on any website, and, more importantly, is completely free of charge. It’s undoubtedly the easiest, cheapest and fast way of getting your visitors’ information, including their IP address or hostname.

If you already use any of the Google services, you can easily sign in with your existing credentials. The process of setting up your website with Google couldn’t be easier. You will be prompted to create a profile. A profile is basically a metaphor for a folder, where you can keep track of various aspects of your websites’ traffic. Each different domain will have its own separate profile. Select ‘Add Profile for a new domain‘ and enter your domain’s address and timezone.

The next page will generate a bit of code that you’ll have to insert in the header or footer of your website’s template. You have to do this because you  want to keep track of visitors across your website, not just the homepage. This way, no matter where the user navigates to (eg. mysite.com/secondpage), you will know about the total time spent, the pageview/unique visitor ratio and exit funnels.

How you add the code to your website varies dramatically – and requires the knowledge to manually access and edit your theme files. You probably set your own website up, so you must know how to do this. If you don’t know how, don’t panic, and instead search Google for ‘[service type] + edit theme OR Google Analytics‘. For example, ‘Wordpress edit theme Google Analytics‘. There are plenty of guides out there that will show you how to add this bit of code.

In the latest version of the self-hosted Wordpress, I only need to click on ‘Appearance‘ in the sidebar, ‘Editor‘ and choose from the right side list ‘footer.php‘. As a golden rule, insert the code before the last ‘</body></html>’ tags. They’ve also got a lot of support material over at the help page, which you might want to check out if in doubt.

Twenty-four hours later and you’ve got the first taste of website statistics. Be prepared to spend the rest of the evening looking at various graphs of source locations, connection speed, ISP, browser capabilities, operating systems, browsers, time on site and more. After that, the only problem that could arise is that you’ll wish you could install a tracking code in your girlfriend, in order to be plot the ‘visitor loyalty’ chart.

If you want to view individual IP addresses of your website’s visitors you need to click on Visitors>Network Properties>Hostnames, from the right sidebar, as illustrated in the screenshot above. There you will see a list of IP addresses and how many times each has visited the website. This can prove useful if your site is being attacked (defaced, DDOS-ed, etc.), as you can determine who your attacker is, or at least his proxy.

More views and information is accessible through the sidebar on the right: Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals. They’re pretty much self explanatory. The Visitors tab will contain information about – you’ve guessed it, the people who accessed your site. Traffic sources will identify who sent you traffic, be it a search engine, a referral or just organic. The Content tab will dutifully tell you how each page is doing when it comes to attracting eyeballs. Finally, Goals is used by e-commerce folks and companies to measure conversions, a fancy word for a sell.

You should definitely spare a minute to check out the quite extensive page of articles about blogging tools.

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An IP address is a series of digits separated by dotted decimals and represented from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. Currently we are following the Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), although the successor ‘version 6’ has been standardized.

A good hacker will take steps to prevent his IP from being revealed. A spammer might hide behind a proxy server. It is also important to remember that locating an IP address using online tools does not reveal the physical address of the guy on the computer. The basic tools merely tell us the location of the ISP providing the connection by using publicly available information. To go beyond that and actually nail down the guy sending you the dirty emails would require the law to be in the loop.

Stefan’s post on How to Trace Your Emails Back to the Source is required reading for a very useful application of IP address tracking. An interesting comment has been made by a reader who says that he uses IP address tracing to ‘find out the origin of potential customers who send e-mails and make inquiries through his company’s website’.

In the lines that follow, I am taking Stefan’s post as a stepping stone and extending it by listing sites which serve as tools to trace an IP address to a PC. Any one should be enough but is there any harm in bookmarking a few more?

Part 1: Trace an IP Address to the Country and City of Origin

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Ten years ago most of you were still buying magazines, and renting videos, and going to the post office, and ordering things from the Sears catalogue. The only thing cooler would be the ability to teleport ourselves through it.

Look at a map of the Internet sometime and you’ll see that it is like a million superhighways with no lines painted on the road. It’s a snake pit of computers attaching to modems attaching to phone lines, or cable, or satellites, or cell networks, attaching to more computers, servers, routers and modems and so on, and so on. There is no beginning. There is no end.

In the image above, you are looking at one very small part of the Internet. See that star-burst like image it is extracted from? Go take a look at the full image. It takes awhile to load. Then come back, of course.

What makes the Internet work at all, is something called the Internet Protocol (IP). You may have heard of the term IP Address. Now you know what the IP stands for, but do you know what it is? A protocol is a set method for a way of doing things. Think of an incoming phone call. Typically it goes like this: you hear the phone ring, you pick up, you say “Hello…” and maybe a little more like, “…this is Guy speaking.” Then the person on the other end acknowledges you with something like, “Hey Guy, this is work. Where the heck are you?” Then the lying, I mean conversation, begins. That’s a socially accepted phone call protocol.

That’s basically how the Internet works. You tell your computer to connect to a resource, let’s say MakeUseOf.com. Just pulled that out of my hat. MakeUseOf.com is a human readable form for the IP address 216.92.56.91. Who’s going to remember that?  Exactly.

So we have something called a Universal Resource Locator (URL) like MakeUseOf.com. Something called a Domain Name Server (DNS) which looks up that URL and then figures out the IP address associated with it. Think of a REALLY big phone book. You look up your plumber’s name and then you figure out what his phone number is. Same deal. Makes sense so far? Relax, there is no quiz and your Internet Users License won’t be revoked.

What the above image shows is the available IP version 4 (IPv4) space. MakeUseOf.com is located in the 216 block. Remember that from the first 3 digits of the IP address? That block belongs to ARIN - American Registry for Internet Numbers. Kind of like how the area code 403 belongs to Alberta. Got’er figured?

Here’s where it gets a little crazy. Each piece of data you send out is broken down into packets. Imagine mailing your friend a book, page by page. Each page will have to carry your friend’s address and the page number to let him know what order it goes in. It should also let him know how many pages there are, so he knows when he has it all. They should also have your address, so if the mail person can’t deliver it, they know where it came from.

So, each packet carries the intended IP address, a number to determine where the packet fits back into the data sent, how many packets to expect, as well as your IP address. Crazy huh? It has more than that, but that’s the really important stuff. Check it out in the packet header below. I highlighted the stuff we talked about in green.

Now, check this out. Each packet doesn’t necessarily go down the same set of wires to its destination. “What kind of glue are you  on, Guy?” No, it’s true. Those packets go out to a device called a router, which then sends the packet to the nearest available router that is closer to that destination, and, hopefully, isn’t too congested. It figures that out based on the numbers in your IP address. The first three numbers identify a large area, and the rest make it more specific. Yet again, just like a phone number. This is known as ‘best-effort-delivery’.

So one packet may get routed through Virginia and another may go through Vancouver on their way to the same server in Hong Kong. This also means that packet A might get there later than packet B, or not at all! See what I mean about the miracle of a working Internet?

When the packets arrive at the destination, the server or computer receiving it compiles it into something cohesive, or it puts the book back together, to carry on that metaphor. Now the computer receiving all the packets sends back a message to the originating computer to say, in effect, “Thanks! Good-bye.” Thus the communication ends.

That’s the simplest, high-level overview I can give on how the Internet works. Take what I’ve said and add in millions of servers, routers, modems, and other networking devices and you can see how the complexity is magnified exponentially.

Next time you get an error message or a page loads a little slower than normal, reflect on this article and relive the amazement that the thing works at all. It’s all perspective, my friends. And lots of wires.

Photo Credit: Justinc

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Other positive points, they are really tiny – most are less than 1 Mb in size. Some even less than 100 kb.

My recent article about a very useful menubar application called Main Menu made me aware that there are many others out there. So, after a little digging, here are few of the many.

1. aLaunch

1. aLunch is a customizable application launcher accessed from your menubar. I personally prefer Quicksilver as the launcher, but aLunch have one advantage over Quicksilver: users don’t have to remember the app name and just browser through the list instead.

2. Caffeine

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menubar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu. The menu now has a sub-menu for deactivating Caffeine automatically after a number of minutes.

This feature will be very useful if you do a lot of activities on your Mac which require staring at the display for a long time without mouse and keyboard activities, like watching movie or thinking over a design.

3. ClipMenu

ClipMenu stores clipboard histories such as plain text, rich texts format, PDF, PICT, and TIFF image. You can access in the menubar or by using hot key.

I’ve searched for a powerful but free clipboard app which can reside in the menubar. And this is it. The website itself is in Japanese, so if you don’t read Katakana-Hiragana-Kanji, you need to access the English translated page.

4. Eigenclock

Eigenclock is a menubar clock the way you want it. It features a fully customizable menu-bar display format, as well as a nice-looking calendar in a pop-up menu.

Eigenclock is now completely localizable. It determines the proper first day of the week (Monday, Sunday, Saturday) from your locale, and shows the names of the months and days in your current language. Eigenclock is currently a Leopard only application.

5. HimmelBar

HimmelBar is a little faceless application that provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications by scanning standard locations such as local, user, developer and network applications, and also utilities.

6. IPMenulet

IPMenulet shows the current external IP address in the menubar. If you constantly on the move and changing net connection, you will appreciate this little app.

7. iStat Menua

iStat Menus lets you monitor your system right from the menubar. Included are 8 menu extras that let you monitor every aspect of your system, such as: cpu usage, memory usage, disk usage and activity, current and total bandwidth, peak bandwidth, ip addresses, the temperature of your mac, and also fan speeds in your mac.

It is also able to show and control bluetooth status plus monitor the battery level of your Apple wireless keyboard or mouse. As a bonus, it will also display date + time in your menubar, including world clock display.

This very useful app has been discussed several times before. And as the alternative, you can also try MenuMeters.

8. MeNotes

MeNotes lets you manage personal notes and access them quickly in Menubar. Localized in English and French. There’s no web page for this app, just a direct link.

There are surprisingly many times when I need to do quick text and sometimes keep the text for a while. I find this little one quite handy in this department, and I’m sure many of the readers will feel the same.

Menubar Countdown

Menubar Countdown is a simple countdown timer that displays itself on the right side of the Mac OS X menu bar.

To set the timer, click on the display and select the Start → menu item. A dialog will appear that allows you to specify the countdown time in hours, minutes, and seconds. The dialog also allows you to specify which of the following forms of notification you want when the timer gets down to 00:00:00 such as play the system alert sound, display an alert window, make a spoken announcement. You can specify the text to be spoken.

And let us wrap the list with two iTunes menubar applications:

10. uTunes

uTunes is a simple iTunes controller. It was designed to not get in the way and thus installs itself in the menubar (next to your clock) and acts as a remote control for iTunes.

11. I Love Stars

I Love Stars allows users to easily rate the songs currently played from the menubar.

I’m fully aware that there are many-many more menubar application out there and it’s impossible to list each and every one of them out here. So, what’s your favorite menubar application? Share using the comment below.

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First of all, you will of course need an SSH server running somewhere. Linux and OS X come with SSH servers, but there are also SSH servers available for Windows. freeSSHd is a nice free SSH server for Windows. It is a quick and easy installation and relatively easy to configure as well. You will of course need administrator privileges on the machine you install it onto.

Since you will be accessing your SSH server remotely, if it is behind a firewall or router you will have to make sure that port 22 (the default SSH port) is properly forwarded to it. Most routers have the ability to forward ports to individual machines on the local network. You’ll have to refer to the instructions for your router/firewall on how to do this.

Once you have your SSH server configured so that you can connect to it from any Internet connection, you’ll of course need a client to connect to it. Linux and OS X both have SSH clients built-in.  If you’re on Windows, the client of choice is PuTTY. I will provide instructions on tunneling with PuTTY, but you can certainly use other clients as well.

First, specify the address of your SSH server in the Session section. Select SSH for the Connection type and enter 22 for the Port (or whatever external internet port you are using to connect to your SSH server).

Next, go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels. There are three types of tunnels you can set up:

• Dynamic – This acts as a SOCKS proxy that can be used to tunnel traffic through the network where the SSH server resides.  You can then configure applications that support SOCKS proxies (such as a web browser) to take advantage of it. I’ll demonstrate how to set up Firefox to work through a dynamic tunnel.
• Local – A local tunnel will allow you to connect to the specified port on a machine residing on the same network as the SSH server.  One useful example that I will show you is how to connect to a Windows computer running Remote Desktop.
• Remote – As the name somewhat implies, this is the reverse of a local tunnel.  You are probably less likely to use this, but it would allow machines on the SSH server network to access a machine and port on the network where your SSH client resides.  I won’t go through any examples on setting up a remote port in this article.

So in the example I’m going to provide, we will say the home network has two computers. One is a Linux box running the SSH server and the other is a Windows box with Remote Desktop enabled. We want to set up two tunnels: a dynamic tunnel and a local tunnel to connect to the Windows machine via Remote desktop.

Let’s first set up a dynamic tunnel for port 1080. The port you use for a dynamic tunnel is actually arbitrary, but since port 1080 is often used for SOCKS proxies that’s what we’ll use. Type 1080 in the Source port field, select Dynamic as the port type, and then click the Add button.

Next, let’s set up the local tunnel for the computer on the network running Windows Remote Desktop.  Let’s say the local IP addresses on the LAN where the SSH server resides are 192.168.1.xxx addresses.  The Windows machine has a local IP of 192.168.1.100. Enter 3390 for the Source port, 192.168.1.100:3389 for the Destination, select Local for the port type, and then click the Add button. You’ll see later why I’ve configured the source port to be different than the destination.

Once you have everything configured for the connection, go back to the Session section and save your connection. Then click Open and log into your Linux box with your credentials as you normally would.

Now you have to configure your applications to use the tunnels you have set up.  Let’s say you want to do your web browsing through the dynamic tunnel we set up. This is actually an extremely useful way to take advantage of SSH.

You may be on a network with some sort of firewall or content filtering that you wish to bypass. If you are able to get out on port 22 (or any other port, you’ll just have to set up your SSH server accordingly), then you’ll be able to surf wherever you want without issue through the dynamic tunnel.

It is also useful if you are surfing on a network where you may be concerned about others observing your traffic. Perhaps you are connecting from a hotel, a client site, or from work (you didn’t learn that from me) and you do not want others monitoring your traffic.

The best choice is to use Firefox, because Firefox allows you to configure the browser to also send DNS requests through the proxy. If you use Internet Explorer, your DNS requests are still made via the local network you connect from and thus can still be monitored. So Firefox would be the preferred browser if you wish to maintain privacy on the network you are connecting from.

To set up Firefox to use the dynamic tunnel as a SOCKS proxy, go to the Firefox Options > Advanced > Network and click the Settings… button.  In the settings page, click Manual proxy configuration, enter localhost for the SOCKS Host, and 1080 for the Port.

We’re not quite done. We still need to configure Firefox to send DNS requests to the SOCKS proxy as well.  To do this, enter about:config in the navigation bar in Firefox. You may get a prompt asking you if you know what you’re doing. Assure Firefox that you know what you’re doing and proceed.

Enter socks_remote_dns for the Filter and press enter. You should see a single option that says network.proxy.socks_remote_dns. If it says false for the Value, double-click on it so that it says true. You’re now all set. You should be able to surf the web through your new secure dynamic tunnel!

Fortunately, connecting to our Windows Remote Desktop machine is much easier. You just launch the Remote Desktop Client and enter localhost:3390 for the machine address. That’s all there is to it!

The reason we set up the source port to 3390 is because the Remote Desktop Client will not allow you to connect to the default remote desktop port (3389) on the local machine. So that’s why we used 3390 instead (we could have used any port, I just use 3390 because it’s easy for me to remember).

The source port you use for setting up the tunnels is arbitrary. We could have used 1234 instead of 3390 if we wanted to, as long as nothing is running on the local machine at port 1234. What is not arbitrary is what you use on the destination IP and port. For that you will need to use the proper IP address and port for the service you wish to connect to.

You can set up tunnel for any service on any IP anywhere. You’ll just need to set up the program to connect to localhost on the source port you set up for the tunnel. It’s a pretty nifty way to connect to stuff you may not be able to otherwise, due firewall issues you may encounter. All you need is a single port to get to your SSH server, and it of course has to be running on that port.

Do you use SSH tunnels? What sorts of cool things do you use them for?

Photo Credit: kreg.steppe

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The paranoids have said that this information can and will be abused. Either by some government organization somewhere in their attempt to monitor and control all communications, or by marketers to determine ‘the customer’s profile’ to be able to ‘provide better service’. That’s why the paranoids are crazy about anonymous internet surfing and make sure to cover their tracks on internet. It’s crucial to cover your tracks on the internet.

Personally speaking, I haven’t reached the privacy paranoid level yet, but I always could use some anonymity here and there – and I’m sure that everybody else does too.

JAP (JonDo)

Usually I use Toonel to hide my tracks, but I accidentally ran into another application called JAP (JonDo) and decided to give it a try. It’s another “cover your tracks” software which gives users the ability to stay anonymous online.

Some have said that this one is the best out there. The degree of the featured software anonymization abilities is so good that in 2004 the German police, while investigating cases related to child pornography, insisted on opening a back door to the product allowing them complete access. Even though the required modification was performed, it was subsequently removed as a result of court action by JAP.

You can download JAP from their download page, and they have one for everybody – Windows, Mac, Linux, and OS/2. They also have Java and (still in alpha) a Firefox version.

How Does It Work?

An ordinary internet connection will use a traceable address that can track which site you were visiting, and who your internet service provider (ISP) is. By knowing this, people can also tell where you come from. If there’s someone with ‘authority’ who wanted to push things a little bit further, they would be able to trace the specific location of your computer.

JAP will re-route your connection via a single static address which is shared by many JAP users. That way you become one among the many similar users. Neither the visited website nor an eavesdropper can determine which user visited which website.

So, instead of connecting directly to a Web Server, JAP uses integrated proxy services that hide the real IP address through a proxy mix cascade that effectively hides the identity of any one single user among the connections of all the other users – making it impossible, even for the proxy provider, to determine which IP belongs to which user.

Configuring Your System

After installing JAP, you need to configure your browser to use the local proxy server (127.0.0.1 – and the installer will tell you which port to use) for web browsing. Windows’ Firefox users can do this by going to Tools –> Options –> Advanced, then select the Network tab and choose Settings. Different browsers will have slightly different menus, but I’m sure everybody can get it right without too many difficulties.

If you want to stay hidden for any other activities besides browsing, you would also need to reconfigure the proxy settings for other applications which are connected to the internet. JAP supports various internet protocols such as: HTTP, HTTPS, FTP (download only), and Gopher; while file sharing, P2P, chat, IM, email and Internet telephony are unsupported.

To use the service, just do your normal internet activity while turning the JAP on. The provided control panel allows you to turn anonymity on or off, and also displays the current level of security. JAP comes pre-configured with several free service providers and also supports pay services. Services run by universities and other public infrastructures are free of charge for the user.

Have you used JAP? Or do you use another anonymity service?  Please share your opinion and/or information regarding this issue using the comment section below.

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If there is one thing I hate doing the most is walking people through IP address setup’s. In my company all of our machines are given static IP’s right out of the box. It helps us with tracking and auditing. A lot of users take their laptops home to use on their home networks in the evenings.

End users being what they are – They delete the IP information we have assigned them to revert to obtain an IP address automatically. What these users don’t know is that they will be unable to put the settings back (unless of course they wrote them down – YEAH RIGHT!).

If you have a user that often winds up in this predicament than this is the app for them! Similarly if you ‘re looking for a quick way to change connection settings you might want to get it as well. It sits in your system tray and does not use much memory. It is also free for non-commercial usage.

NetSetMan interface has two sections. The main one is where you can set and view your network settings and then there is the one on the left. You will quickly see the 6 tabs for different network setups.

This is the guts of the application. Here you get to store your IP, Subnetmask, Default Gateway and DNS information. You can also optionally choose DHCP for an auto-configured network. You can see by pressing the drop down arrow next to your network adapter you can do the same thing for ANY adapter connected to your machine.

Now the author has also decided to throw in some “Additional” options regarding your connection like allowing you to change the PC name you want to use, among others. I don’t really have a need for this but hey you might. You never know right!

The last option under the Additional tab is Scripts – this is great because it allows you to run a custom script before or after connection. This can be especially helpful for opening files or mapping shares when connecting to specific networks.

And don’t forget the quick network information you can pull by simply holding your mouse over the systray icon.

You will see this:

I have tried many times to do this with pure batch files and scripting but it just never worked out. What about you guys do you have some networking magic that you care to share with us? Put us on it the comments!

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I have seen every security option available and NOTHING is fool-proof. I have witnessed someone picking up a table and simply removing the laptop lock from the leg and running with the machine – In a crowded food court! The worst one I think was a guy who decided to bring it with him into the bathroom and set it down on the little table by the door. He did his business, washed his hands and when he went to turn around, he discovered it was jacked!

What do you do then? Maybe your machine is covered on your home owners or renters insurance but that still won’t get back your data or computer. So a little application called LocatePC that lives on your Windows-based machine gives you a little more added security. All it does is monitor your IP address. If it detects a change in your IP it sends a pre-configured email. Interesting concept and best of all it is free. You download the small installer from here and run through a super simple setup that asks you for your email address, an email server that does POP3 and the message you want to send. They recommend adding your Model number, Serial and any other pertinent data you can think of. Here are some screen shots of the configurable options.

After setting her up I was prompted with this warning:

That is a really smart warning! Especially for some users that are only able to retrieve their email via VPN. (I think it should say maybe you want to use your Gmail account…). Now this is supposed to be “Covert” software so there is no task bar icon or program file associated with it.

You can however press Alt+Shift+Home to bring up its settings window. It needs to run at startup to do its thing in case of an IP change. If it is not running it will not do anything!

I simulated an IP change and was greeted within 3 minutes with an email from myself. My email looked a little something like this:

************************************
Message sent: 05/21/08 09:02:50 (universal time: 05/21/08 13:02:50)

Computer’s host name: AskTheAdminTablet
Logged in Windows account name: AskTheAdmin

Computer’s web IP address reported by ip.locatepc.com: 38.0.0.0 (CHANGED FOR OBVIOUS REASONS!)
To learn more about this IP address, use the IP tests at www.dnsstuff.com.

Computer’s local IP address(es):
Adapter 1: 192.168.1.29

Computer’s MAC address(es):
Adapter 1 (Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter(LNE100TX v4) – Packet Scheduler Miniport): 00-14-BF-56-54-DA

Trace route from computer to www.microsoft.com:
Hop Name/IP Addr
1 (CHANGED FOR OBVIOUS REASONS!)
2 gi1-46.3836.mpd01.jfk01.atlas.cogentco.com [66.250.10.73]
3 te4-3.mpd03.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.24.146]
4 Request timed out
5 iij.lax05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.118]
6 ge-0-3-0-44.nyc-64cb-1a.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.37.2]

Identifying information (owner name/address, computer brand/model/serial number):

AskTheAdmin.com Karl L. Gechlik HP 2710P Tablet Serial# saslakslp1

————————————
IF YOU RECEIVED THIS MESSAGE AFTER YOUR COMPUTER WAS STOLEN:
Show this message to law enforcement authorities. They may be able to use it to identify the ISP, and the ISP can probably find out which account was using the computer when the email was sent. This may lead to the identification of the perpetrator(s) and the recovery of your computer.

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This message was automatically created and sent by LocatePC v1.5.0
LocatePC web site: http://www.locatepc.com

Now I don’t know how much the local authorities are actually going to help you but, now you have some information about where your machine is at least virtually. You can then do some super sleuthing to track down where that IP is. Using free tools like this one that lives at http://www.seomoz.org/ip2loc

Your results will look something like this:

Uh-oh! It looks like our laptop is sitting in our office… Oh wait it was just a test No ass kicking neccessary this morning!

(By): Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at askTheAdmin.com today.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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During my day to day Admin duties I get a lot of people pulling me over to the side to ask me “home networking” or “personal” questions. A normal one I get quite frequently is “how can I find out the IP address of a device on my network?” or “What is my TiVo’s IP?”

These end users always make it seem like they are trying to sell me Drugs a kidney on the black market…

“Pssst… Karl. Umm I have a… Ummm”

“What’s going on random end user dude?”

“Well I have a question… But it’s… “personal” Is that OK??”

I usually chuckle and say no.

I pause and go back over to the lost individual and ask them what their deal is.

My recommendation to them is download AngryIPScanner and figure it out for themselves. After the usual deer-caught-in-the-headlights-stare they usually say :

“Huh?”

I tell them to go to download.com and download the newest version of Angry IpScanner. It is a free open source….wait for it….

IP Scanner!

It will allow you to scan a internal or external network for live hosts and even check open ports and some other geeky goodness that will come in handy when you least expect it. The best part of all, this tiny app can be run off of a memory stick as it does not need to be installed.

Here is a shot of the options and what information you can “fetch” and have displayed on the above grid.

For the novices, all they need to do is open the program up and their IP address is already pre-populated on the start of the IP range line. Just change the last number of the IP address to be .1 and in the end make the last number .255. So if the IP address that shows up is 192.168.0.45 I would make the start IP 192.168.0.1 and the end address 192.168.0.255. This will scan my whole subnet for machines or devices.

It is very straight forward and can come in VERY handy. I recommend this guy being added to your USB tool kit immediately! I have been using it for almost 5 years and they recently released the newest version in BETA which is SUPER fast. Give it a go and let us know what you think. Do you use something else? Think you got a better solution?

Well smart guy that’s what the comments are for!

By: Karl L. Gechlik, A superhero of the IT industry. He runs a global WAN, cracks the whip at his consulting company and gets the whip cracked at him by his beautiful wife and daughter! To follow more of his geeky antics check out his site www.askTheAdmin.com today!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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