Question

inSSIDer will help you manage the wireless connections around you for a stable, reliable connection. Now that you have that stable connection, you may want to monitor who else is attached to the network you are connected to. Wireless Network Watcher by NirSoft is a small program that scans the wireless network you are attached to and displays the list of all computers and devices that are connected to the same network. You can download the latest version from https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wireless_network_watcher.html .

For every computer or network device attached, you will see the IP address, the MAC address, the company that manufactured the network interface card, and the computer name. You can take that list and export the connected devices into an HTML, XML, CSV, or TXT file. You can even copy the list and paste it into Excel or another spreadsheet application where you can use tools to list, sort, and pivot the information depending on the volume of data.

This program works well when hosted on a Windows machine but can find other platforms such as Linux or Cisco. Wireless Network Watcher will only find assets connected to the network you are currently connected to, not other wireless networks. In some cases, if your network adapter is not found, you can go to Advanced Options and choose the correct network adapter. Under the View tab, you can add gridlines or shaded odd/even rows. If you're actively monitoring the status of your wireless networks, you can even have the program beep when a new device is found. Figure 6.3 shows a list of IP addresses, the device name, MAC address, and other information including whether the device is active on the current network.

Figure 6.3 : Wireless Network Watcher capture

In Table 6.2 , there are command‐line options for scanning and saving in specific file types while using Wireless Network Watcher.

Table 6.2 : Wireless Network Watcher command‐line options

OPTION	RESULT
/stext <filename>	Scan the network; save in TXT file
/stab <filename>	Scan the network; save in tab‐delimited file
/scomma <filename>	Scan the network; save in CSV file