GetNetworkInfo

GetNetworkInfo User Guide

GetNetworkInfo scans your local network, lists every device it can reach and works out what each one is – who made it, what it is called, what kind of device it is, which model and operating system it likely runs, and which ports it has open. It can also display your own PC’s network configuration together with your public IP address. This guide explains the commands, every column of the device list and each option in Settings.

Contents

1. Getting started in four steps
2. What happens during a scan
3. Understanding the device list
4. How GetNetworkInfo recognizes devices
5. The Device Details window
6. Your PC’s network settings and public IP
7. Adjusting the scan in Settings
8. Keeping the manufacturer list current
9. Menus, shortcuts and context commands
10. Saving and printing the list
11. Solving common problems
12. Requirements and licensing

1. Getting started in four steps

1. In the Network adapter box, pick the adapter that is attached to the network you want to examine – for instance Wi-Fi - 10.0.0.242 or Ethernet - 192.168.1.20. The box only offers adapters that are connected and have an IPv4 address. Plugged in a cable or switched Wi-Fi networks after starting the program? Choose Action > Refresh Network Adapters to update the box.
2. Look at the Scan range. GetNetworkInfo fills it in from the adapter’s subnet; on a big subnet it limits itself to 1024 addresses surrounding your PC (you can raise that limit in Settings). To scan something else, type a range in one of the formats shown below.
3. Press Scan or F5; pressing Enter inside the range box works too. To cancel, press Stop or Esc.
4. Watch the list fill up. Just below the adapter box you will also see your PC’s IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server, plus the Wi-Fi network name and speed.

Accepted range formats:

192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.254
192.168.1.0/24
192.168.1.10-50

2. What happens during a scan

Scanning happens in two phases.

• Discovery. GetNetworkInfo sends an ARP request to each address in the range, 64 addresses in parallel, and adds a row the moment a device replies. Because devices on one network rely on ARP to talk to each other at all, they can’t refuse to answer it. That is why PCs and phones whose firewall drops ping still show up.
• Identification. Every device found is then examined, 16 in parallel, using the techniques described in section 4. Its row is completed piece by piece as replies come back.

Progress appears in the status bar, and when the scan ends the status bar reports how many devices were found.

3. Understanding the device list

One row stands for one device. Colors and icons make the key devices easy to spot:

• Blue – the router (default gateway).
• Green – the PC you are running GetNetworkInfo on.
• Gray – a device listed in the Windows ARP cache, meaning it was on the network a short while ago, that gave no answer this time. Typically this is a sleeping phone or laptop.
• The icon at the start of each row indicates the kind of device: router, computer, phone, TV, printer and others.

To sort, click a column header. Not every column is visible at first: right-click any header, or open Tools > List Columns, to choose which ones appear. The table below marks the columns visible by default.

4. How GetNetworkInfo recognizes devices

No one technique can name every device, so the program uses several and merges what they report. You can switch each of them off in Settings.

A set of rules turns all these clues into one Device Type: Router / Gateway, Computer, Phone / Tablet, TV / Streaming, Game console, IP camera, Printer, NAS / Storage, Smart speaker, Smart home / IoT, Network equipment, or Unknown. Treat the type as an educated guess – the Device Details window explains how it was reached.

Private MAC addresses

Instead of their real hardware address, iPhones running iOS 14 or newer, Android phones running Android 10 or newer and many Windows laptops present a random “private Wi-Fi address” that differs from network to network. Since no manufacturer owns such an address, the Manufacturer column reads (private address). In practice these are nearly always phones or tablets, and the mDNS or DNS name or the open ports usually say more about them.

5. The Device Details window

To open it, double-click a row, select a row and press Enter, or press Details on the toolbar. It gathers everything GetNetworkInfo learned about the device:

• IP address, MAC address and manufacturer;
• device type together with Why this type;
• how the device was discovered, with the ARP reply time;
• ping time, TTL and the operating system estimate;
• all names that were found;
• open ports and what each one means;
• the complete UPnP description – friendly name, manufacturer, model, description, device type, serial number, SSDP server and description URL;
• for the router, its DHCP server and DNS server roles.

Two buttons are available: Copy All puts the whole text on the clipboard, and Open Web Page, which appears only when the device has a web interface, opens that interface in your browser.

6. Your PC’s network settings and public IP

Press Network on the toolbar, or choose Action > Network Information, to review how this computer is connected. The window shows:

• General: computer name, NetBIOS name, DNS domain, workgroup or domain, user name and Windows version.
• Public IPv4 address and Public IPv6 address: how your connection appears to the Internet, obtained from api.ipify.org. This is the address your Internet provider gives your router, not your PC’s local address.
• Each connected adapter: description; connection type (Ethernet, Wi-Fi or mobile broadband); status; MAC address; IPv4 and IPv6 addresses; subnet mask; default gateway; DNS servers and DNS suffix; whether DHCP is used, the DHCP server and the lease expiry time; link speed; MTU; interface index.
• Wi-Fi adapters, additionally: SSID (network name), Wi-Fi standard, signal quality and channel.

Copy All places this information on the clipboard – handy when your Internet provider’s support team asks for details.

7. Adjusting the scan in Settings

Open the dialog with Settings on the toolbar or Tools > Settings. Your choices are stored and apply to every later scan; Defaults brings back the original values.

Discovery (ARP)

Identification

• Ping each device – needed for the Ping ms and OS (from TTL) columns.
• Look up names – reverse DNS, NetBIOS and mDNS/Bonjour lookups.
• Discover UPnP devices (SSDP) – retrieves the name, manufacturer and model of TVs, consoles, routers and other UPnP devices.
• Read the title of the device’s web interface – supplies the Web Interface column.
• Probe TCP ports – a comma-separated list of the ports tried on every device. You may include ranges like 8000-8100, for a total of up to 1024 ports. Out of the box the list holds 31 ports chosen to help recognize home devices.
• Port probe timeout (100–10000 ms, default 800) – how long to wait for a port to accept a connection.
• Ping / NetBIOS / mDNS timeout (200–10000 ms, default 1000) – how long to wait for those replies. A slow or crowded Wi-Fi network may need a higher value.
• Devices identified in parallel (1–64, default 16).

At the bottom of the dialog you can see the number of manufacturer address blocks currently loaded, the date of that data and the file it came from.

8. Keeping the manufacturer list current

The program ships with a copy of the IEEE registry of MAC address blocks – over 54,000 assignments in all three sizes: MA-L (24-bit), MA-M (28-bit) and MA-S (36-bit). When several prefixes match an address, the longest one is used.

Because the IEEE hands out new blocks every week, you may want a fresh copy now and then. Press Vendors on the toolbar or choose Tools > Update Vendor Database; GetNetworkInfo downloads the current registry, roughly 6 MB, from standards-oui.ieee.org. It stores the file as %APPDATA%\Ashkon Software\GetNetworkInfo\oui.txt and uses that copy from then on.

9. Menus, shortcuts and context commands

10. Saving and printing the list

Export writes the currently visible columns either to a CSV file, which Excel can open, or to a tab-separated text file. The proposed file name includes the scan’s date and time, so saving after each scan builds up a record of what has been on your network over time.

Print sends the list to a printer, with the scanned range shown in the heading.

11. Solving common problems

A device I know is there doesn’t appear

With the screen off, phones put their Wi-Fi to sleep. Wake the phone and scan again, or leave the ARP cache option enabled so recently seen devices are still listed. ARP can’t reach devices on a guest Wi-Fi network or a different subnet; connect this PC to that network and run the scan from there.

Device Type says Unknown

In that case only the manufacturer could be determined, so open Device Details for more. If the maker is a module vendor – Espressif, Tuya or Texas Instruments, for example – the device is most likely a smart plug, a light bulb or another smart home gadget.

I don’t recognize a device

Match its MAC address against the labels on your own hardware or against the client list in your router’s admin pages. If it still belongs to nobody you know, change your Wi-Fi password.

The Ping ms column shows “-”

The device’s firewall is dropping ping, which Windows does by default. ARP found the device anyway.

Scans take a long time

Most of the time goes into waiting for devices that never answer. Disable the identification techniques you don’t need, trim the port list or reduce the timeouts.

I’m connected through a VPN

Select your Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapter in the Network adapter box rather than the VPN adapter.

12. Requirements and licensing

GetNetworkInfo runs on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11 (32-bit and 64-bit) on a PC connected to the network by Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Scanning works without administrator rights. Internet access is used only to look up your public IP address and to update the vendor database.

You can try GetNetworkInfo free for 30 days. To keep using it afterwards, buy a license for $19.95 – choose Help > Register Now in the program, or use the Buy now button on this page.