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Tutorial Part 3

In this third part, we will do a real network discovery.

To launch a real network discovery, you must be connected either to a LAN (local area network) or connected to the Internet with your ISP. Of course, you must have TCP/IP installed and configured. You must know your local TCP/IP address and the subnet mask you are using, (you will find some help with the '>' button next to the addresses edit field). You can always find these values by typing IPCONFIG at the console (DOS) prompt of your system.

Note: NetworkView uses several protocols for its discovery process. If you are connected to a LAN (Local Area Network), there are certainly no restrictions on what protocols you can use. If you try to discover on the Internet, it is possible that your traffic goes through firewalls which disable some of the protocols and ICMP could be blocked. In this case, disable the Ping Required in Discovery Options, General.

1. Start NetworkView
2. Select the menu File, New or click on the New button the File toolbar.
3. Choose the Discovery Type you want:
   • If you are a standalone system or the only node in the network , choose Single, and type your address.
   • If you want to scan a small range of addresses, choose Range, and type the Start and End addresses.
   • If you want to scan the whole subnet, choose Subnet, and type the network address and the subnet mask. A confirmation will be asked.
4. Click on the Settings button and be sure that the Log discovery to file checkbox in the General tab is enabled: the log.txt will contain the details of your scan. You can later view this file with the menu Logs, Discovery Log.
5. Select the Icmp/Snmp tab. If you are connected to a slow network (Internet), you may increase the default timeouts to 1000 milliseconds or more. You can also double check the community names: NetworkView will try each of these names to gain access to the remote SNMP MIB.
6. Click on the Ports tab. In the TCP/IP environment, Ports numbers represent the services that are available on the system. Ports 0-1023 are called the "well-known" ports, because they are fixed by the standards. Ports greater than 1023 are mostly free. You can choose which ports will be searched and also which additional ports to scan. Enable #2, enter 17 as Number, Quote as Name (will return a random quote). Enable #3, enter 13 as Number, Daytime as Name (will get the time and day). Again, if you are connected to a slow network (Internet), increase the default values for timeout to 1000 milliseconds or more.
7. Click OK twice to start the discovery. If it takes too long, you can stop it at any time with the Cancel button.
8. When the discovery is finished, you can save the map in the directory you choose. Of course you can print it, or make any modification you need before. Remember to have a look at the Logs, Discovery Log menu, where you find useful information on what happened during the discovery process.
9. Click on the List View button in the File toolbar, then the Ports Analysis menu . This list is the result of the scanning of the ports. Click again on the List View button and select the Port Scan menu: Port analysis tries to find information from the port, Port Scan just checks for their presence.
10. Close and save your map (as myfile.nvd file, for example), and then select Tutorial 4 from the Help Contents.