Network Discovery Tool

You should understand WHAT network discovery tool you are trying to find. This application will discover the network for - WHAT? What information should it display the network administrator after discovering the network?

There is a lot of network discovery tools available on the market. They implement different tasks and show very different information to the user, but the most important and useful products of this kind are those that inventory the network and get hardware and software details for each workstation or networked device found.

After these details will be detected, the application records it in a centralized database so the network guy or another IT professional at any time can review what operating system is installed on Joe's PC or how much memory does Mr.Roberts have on his laptop.

Network discovery tools of this kind detect as much details about each networked computer as possible. They reveal processor model and speed, memory size installed, HDD capacity, video card model, network adapter type (wired or wireless) speed and configuration, peripheral devices like printers and faxes and so on. For software products they detect not only OS name and version, but also service packs and hotfixes installed, the name and version of the antivirus software used, and, finally, the list of applications (sometimes with the license keys) installed on each individual computer.

Finally, the network guy or IT team member who used this software to inventory his/her network reviews the complete configuration details of the network retrieved after the network scan. Of course he can later check the details detected or even re-scan the whole LAN or a certain subnet, updating the data stored in the inventory configuration database.

To check how it works please try the free trial version of the Asset Tracker for Networks, definitely the best tool of this kind available:

Next article: Network Inventory