Best Portable Network Scanner Tools for Efficient Network Management [2024]
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Key notes
- Network scanners don’t need to be consuming software tools that can run on your PC.
- The article below will showcase the best portable network scanners, some of them for free.
- We’ve included tools that can provide helpful assistance for a great portable IP scanner.
- Their rich toolset also makes them great portable LAN scanners as well.
In case you work on a network, you definitely know the value of information because reliable information will lead to a secure and worry-free system.
When you’re thinking about network scanning, you may think of some expensive commercial products that not many people can afford.
You don’t need to own such a program to accomplish an easy job such as finding out the open ports on the computers from the same local network.
You can rely on online IP scanners that can help you diagnose the status of your network, but you can also install reliable software and use it to check your network on a regular basis.
Using these tools, you will also be able to troubleshoot accurately and diagnose your network issues. The selection below contains tools that are user-oriented and easy to use, and these port scanners are portable, requiring no installation.
Network monitoring and diagnostic tools are used by ISP’s for daily network management operations and also by popular network apps such as peer-to-peer systems for performance optimization.
Sometimes the high overhead of various monitoring and diagnosing techniques can limit the tools’ applicability.
We have gathered ten portable network scanner tools that will come in handy.
What are the best portable network scanner tools?
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer
Another good and comprehensive tool for network scanning and optimization is ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer. It is an all-in-one solution for traffic analysis, bandwidth optimization, WLC monitoring, and more.
The software gives insights into the way your bandwidth is being used so that you can know how much space would be optimal.
On top of that, it also carries out in-depth scans and gives you valuable Network Traffic Analytics.
Manage Engine Netflow Analyzer is meant to be an efficient and time-saving tool which is why it offers intelligible graphic analytics. You can customize your dashboard to view the exact parameters/widgets that you’re interested in.
The software also has an alerting feature that sets off when the scans and analytics conducted find that your network is not on the right track, so you can fix the problem right away.
Other notable features provided by NetFlow Analyzer include:
- Monitors traffic in routers/switches
- Department bandwidth monitoring- monitors a specific department in your organization so you can know exactly how much it consumes
- Application-specific usage monitoring- helps optimize and prioritize your most important applications
- Site-to-site traffic monitoring
- Router Traffic Monitoring
The software comes in two paid editions: Professional and Enterprise. Each of them can be tried for free as part of a 30-day trial.
ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer
Always stay optimized with advanced traffic scans, reports and more.PRTG Network Monitor
This tool monitors the network availability and network usage using various protocols such as WMI, Netflow, and SNMP. This is a powerful tool that is able to offer an easy-to-use interface that is web-based and apps destined for Android and iOS.
The PRTG offers comprehensive network monitoring which 0offers over 170 sensor types for app monitoring, QoS monitoring, SLA monitoring, and virtual server monitoring.
Its flexible alerting features include 9 different notification methods, limit alerts, status alerts, threshold alerts, alert scheduling, and conditional alerts.
The tool has an in-depth reporting feature that has the ability to create reports in HTML/PDF formats, pre-defined reports, report templates, and scheduled reports. You should know that the freeware version of this tool is limited to 10 sensors.
The software is available in various forms, depending on your needs. You can access your network scanner online, as it comes in a browser version, but it also has its own central UI.
After you launch the tool you will have to go straight to the configuration wizard in order to get started.
This will run you through the essential config settings required to get the app up and running and it will include the adding of servers to monitors and the required sensors that you have to use.
PRTG Network Monitor
Manage the way your PC uses your bandwidth with one of the best network monitoring tools on the market today!Advanced Port Scanner
Using the Advanced Port Scanner, you will be able to scan hundreds of IP addresses at the same time but also at the highest speeds.
The tool is able to scan ports of network computers and it can find and open well-known TCP ports and also their computer names and addresses.
More than that, the tool allows you to remote shutdown or to wake up any machines that are found on a particular network.
Advanced Port Scanner will turn out to be your go-to tool whenever you need to find any open ports on a particular computer. The tool works on Windows XP up to Windows 7 and 10 both versions of 32-bit and 64-bit.
The download software package includes both portable and installation versions. In case you prefer running the tool without installing in on your machine, you should definitely go for the portable option after you launch the program.
GFI LanGuard
This network security scanner and patch management tool acts as your virtual security consultant. The tool includes patch management for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
It also adds features such as smart network and software auditing, Vulnerability scanning for computers and for mobile devices and free support so that you will not have to deal with any issues on your own.
Because of the fact that patch management is vital for your business and network security breaches are usually caused by missing network patches, the tool will scan and detect network vulnerabilities before they’re exposed.
It will also reduce the time required to patch machines from your network.
GFI LanGuard also provides a detailed analysis of your network and this will include applications and default configurations that pose a risk for security.
Over 60,000 vulnerability assessments are being carried out across your network.
This tool scans your OS, the virtual environments and all of your apps via vulnerability check databases. It will allow you to analyze the state of your network security and to identify the risks and address how you have to take action before it’s too late.
⇒ Get GFI LanGuard
PortScan & Stuff
PortScan & Stuff is a free port scanner portable tool that is able to identify all the existing active devices on your network and it will also show all open ports and additional info such as MAC address, hostname, HTTP, SMB, SMTP, iSCSI, and SNMP services.
In case a larger network is involved the tool will use up to 100 threads with the purpose of speeding up the performance.
One extremely useful feature of this tool is the Filter feature because it can narrow down the scanning result based on the user’s criteria.
For instance, the user can easily type 3389 in the filter box to find all devices that have the Remote Desktop Protocol turned on to remotely log in without any problems.
Just as its name says, the tool is also able to perform more actions as well and these include searching for devices even if you don’t know the IP address.
You can also look for pinging devices with three standard-sized Ping packets in three different types of pings. Using this tool you can also speed test your Internet connection by downloading and uploading data to various servers.
Nagios
This is a very powerful monitoring tool that makes sure of the fact that all your critical systems, services, and applications will be always up and running.
The tool provides features including alerting, reporting, and also event handling. The heart of this app is the Nagios Core and it contains the core monitoring engine and also a basic web UI.
More than this, you will be able to implement plugins that will allow you to monitor apps, services, and also metrics, graphs, add-ons for data visualization, load distribution, and MySQL database support.
If you want to try out the program without having to install and configure it from zero, you are advised to download the Nagios Xi and to enable the free version of the tool.
The Nagios XI is the pre-configured enterprise-class version built upon Nagios Core. This is packed up by a commercial company that offers you support and more features such as advanced reporting and more plugins.
The free version of Nagios XI is perfect for smaller environments and it will monitor a maximum number of seven nodes.
After you have installed and also configured Nagios, you have to launch the Web, UI and you can begin configuring host groups and service groups.
After the tool monitors the status of the specified hosts and services, it will be able to show you what the health of your systems looks like.
Nagios’ log monitoring, management, and analysis app allow organizations to view quickly and easily logs from machine-generated data. The tool’s Log Server is designed to analyze, collect and store log data which is based on custom specifications.
It will also provide users with insight into all the data from their network’s infrastructure.
⇒ Get Nagios
MiTeC’s Network Scanner
MiTeC’s Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded ICMP, Port, IP, NetBIOS ActiveDirectory, and SNMP scanner with various advanced features.
The tool is targeted at both system admins and general users who are enthusiastic about computer security. The software is able to perform ping sweep, scans for UDP ports, and open TCP, resource shares, and devices.
For devices with SNMP capability, the program will detect all the available interfaces and the basic properties will be displayed.
More than this, you will have the opportunity of editing the results to save or load them to or from CSV and to print a network device list.
Any information from any section will be able to be exported to CVS. The tool can also resolve hostnames and it will auto-detect your local IP range.
The tool provides three different options: you can automatically scan the network, you can scan the Active Directory or you can use a detected range according to an adapter that is defined by the user.
The whole scanning process will not take much time and the app will show each IP address alongside more useful details including the operating system, CPU and its description, MAC address, domain and user.
MiTeC’s Network Scanner functions on all Windows platforms including on the server versions. The tool is free for both commercial and personal use.
The app doesn’t come with a help manual and this might be the most important drawback because users always need more documentation on a tool’s features.
OpenNMS
OpenNMS is a highly integrated open-source platform that is designed for building network monitoring solutions.
The tool can detect service outages and it can measure latency for graphing and thresholding through synthetic polling.
It offers support for many apps with configurable service monitors. It can remotely monitor apps from the users’ perspective.
This tool will use its flexible and extensible architecture to extend service polling and performance data collection frameworks.
OpenNMS includes a client application for the iPhone, iPad or for iPod Touch for on-the-go access and it will give you the ability to view nodes, outages, alarms and to add an interface to monitor.
After you log in to the tool’s web UI you have to use the dashboard to be able to get a quick snapshot view of any notifications. You can drill down and get more info about any sections from the Status drop-down menu.
After you are done, the Reports section will allow you to generate reports which you can then send via email or you can download as a PDF.
⇒ Get OpenNMS
Capsa Free Network Analyzer
This freeware tool is targeted at students, teachers, computer geeks and more. It is a network analyzer that allows users to monitor network traffic, to troubleshoot network issues and analyze packets.
Its features include support for more than 300 network protocols and also the ability to create and customize protocols.
This tool is a must-have network analyzer for Ethernet monitoring, analysis and troubleshooting. It will provide you great experience to learn how to monitor network activities, pinpoint network problems, increase network security and more.
This is the ideal choice for students who learn protocols and networking tech.
The tool will offer your own dashboard, and all the important parameters will be situated in one place. It can record your network profile, set your analysis objective and also perform the customized analysis.
The Dude
The Dude network monitor is a new app by MikroTik which can dramatically enhance the quality of the ways you manage your network environment.
This will automatically scan all devices within the specified subnets, it will draw a layout map of your networks, it will monitor services of your devices and it will also alert you in case some of your services have problems.
The tool offers auto network discovery and layout and it is able to discover any type or brand of device. It includes SVG icons for devices and it also supports custom icons and backgrounds.
The app features an easy installation and it is very easy to use. More than that, it allows you to draw your own maps and to add custom devices, also offering direct access to remote control tools for device management.
It supports remote Dude server and local clients and it runs in Linux Wine environment, Windows, and macOS Darwine.
⇒ Get The Dude
Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector
Xirrius Wi-Fi Inspector is a tool that can be used to search for Wi-Fi networks, manage and troubleshoot connections, verify Wi-Fi coverage, locate Wi-Fi devices, and detect rogue Access Points.
It provides details about each network that it detects including the network SSID, signal strength, network mode, encryption type, frequency, and channel.
This tool has more than 1 million downloads, and it has become the standard for helping organizations from all over the globe to quickly and easily gain visibility into their networks.
The program is designed to provide real-time monitoring of wireless network status. The tool will make sure that you are getting the highest performance available from the wireless network.
Wi-Fi Inspector’s UI includes various modes such as a radar view that displays the closest networks, a view of all networks with their details, and a history view.
The tool is licensed as Freeware for Windows, and it’s available to all software users as a free download.
⇒ Get Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector
We presented these tools to try and make life easier for you. They will all manage to monitor devices, services, ports, and protocols and they will also analyze the traffic on your network.
Check them all out, and we guarantee you the fact that you will find at least a gem or two amongst these tools above.
If you have any additional suggestions or questions, don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments section below.
Our selection of software to check ports includes tools that meet the needs of the individual as well as enterprise-level users.
