Screenshots: See what's on your network with the help of these five apps

Ping Tester

Ping Tester uses ICMP pings to detect devices on your network. In addition to performing ping sweeps, it performs internet connectivity tests by pinging well known websites, such as Google and Yahoo.

Ping Tester

Ping Tester offers a number of advanced functions, like the ability to set individual parameters for ping tests and to schedule testing. The utility can also perform TRACERT-based testing.

Ping Tester sells for $39.95, but a free trial version is available for download.

Network Inventory Advisor

Network Inventory Advisor can help you discover the various resources on your network. It uses a simple wizard-based interface and lists discovered devices by operating system. It also provides reports related to software, license keys, hardware, and alerts. Network Inventory Advisor must be provisioned with administrative credentials for the target devices so it can collect this information.

Network Inventory Advisor

Network Inventory Advisor sells for $89.00, but a free trial version is available for download.

Belarc Advisor

Belarc Advisor is a free tool that's primarily intended to provide detailed information about a single PC’s hardware and operating system. It might not be the sort of tool you'd normally think of as being a network discovery utility, but it does include discovery capabilities.

Belarc Advisor

Belarc provides the free tool primarily as a way of promoting BelManage, which is the enterprise version of Bellarc Advisor. As such, Belarc Advisor demonstrates some of these enterprise management capabilities by performing a network device discovery. The software displays the IP address, device type, device details, and device roles for each discovered device.

Advanced IP Scanner

Advanced IP Scanner is a free tool for scanning an IP address range to collect network device data. One of the great things about this tool is that it can be used as a portable utility that does not require a traditional installation.

Advanced IP Scanner

Advanced IP Scanner displays the status, name, IP address, manufacturer, and Mac address of each discovered device. You can enter IP address ranges manually or scan addresses from a file. The software also allows you to connect to discovered devices using protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and RDP.

Wireless Network Watcher

WirelessNetwork Watcher is a free tool designed to discover devices on your wireless network. However, it doesn't seem to differentiate between wireless networks and wired networks; it had no trouble scanning devices on my wired network.

Wireless Network Watcher

For each discovered device, Wireless Network Watcher displays the IP address, device name, MAC address, network adapter manufacturer, device information, user text, and the date on which the device was first detected. The output can be customized to include additional information, such as when the device was last detected.

Because this tool is designed to scan wireless networks, it can be used as a security tool as well. You can set it up to keep tabs on your network and alert you any time a new device is detected.