The intent of this article is to familiarize the reader with the network scanner nmap. As Lamont Grandquist (an nmap contributor/developer) points out, nmap does three things: It will ping a number of hosts to determine if they are up. It . . .
The intent of this article is to familiarize the reader with the network scanner nmap. As Lamont Grandquist (an nmap contributor/developer) points out, nmap does three things: It will ping a number of hosts to determine if they are up. It will portscan hosts to determine what services they are offering and it will attempt to determine the OS (operating system) of host(s). Nmap allows the user to scan networks as small as a two node LAN (Local Area Network) or as large as a 500 node LAN and even larger. Nmap also allows you to customize your scanning techniques.

You might also be interested in an feature story written posted here a while back:

Scanning and Defending Networks with nmap

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