iNet – Network scanner – Review
By App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: Linnart Baeker
Version #: 1.1 (iPhone OS 3.0 Tested)
Date Released: 2009-06-30
Developer:
Price: 2.99
User Rating:
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Diagnosing problems with a network can often be difficult—especially in this “age of networks”. With so many devices, laptops, and computers having the ability to easily get on a LAN, the latest network topology may be out of date. To work around these issues, network administrators often need tools to scan a LAN for what’s devices are currently on it, what “ports” (or services) are running on those devices and if you can reach out to the WAN (or Internet).
Tools for helping find this are readily available across the net—but often they require a laptop or desktop computer. While not a hindrance, having the ability to do this on a hand held device (like an iPhone) in my pocket would be fantastic!
Thus enters iNet. It does for networks what iStat does for computers—it helps diagnose and figure out your current network topology, devices, and open ports that are on the LAN (assuming you have a wireless router within reach, that is). With this information
you can start to trouble shoot routing issues, rouge devices on your network (incase you have a compromised LAN), viruses (some open unusal ports), and LAN-to-WAN connectivity issues via ping.
Because it is hand held, you can easily make a change to the network and rescan it without having to flip between laptop and desktop.
Quick Take
Value:High
Would I Buy Again:Yes...this seems like a great tool when diagnosing network issues
Learning Curve:Very little, assuming you are at least slightly comfortable with LANs and LAN configurations
Who Is It For:Network and computer managers
What I Like:Simple, easy to use and powerful
What I Don't Like:It'd be great if it had traceroute as well!
Final Statement:This is a great hand held utility for all network admins and IT consultants.
iNet provides you with information about networks your iPhone or iPod touch ist connected to. Its very easy and user friendly design allows even for the unexperienced user to get a profound and understandable overview of his network and the running services.
In version 1.1 of iNet we implemented the following features:
• Network scan
• Ping
• Bonjour browser
• Portscan
• Device info
• Wake on Lan
• Extensive help section
• send scan results via email
Scan Network:
iNet shows the devices connected to your local network, e. g. computer or router, along with their name, IP and vendor. iNet discovers and distinguishes between windows and macintosh computers with different icons. For most Apple Computers you even see the particular computer model. You can find out the name, vendor and IP of the connected devices as well as the number of running Bonjour services on that particular device. You can also perform a classic portscan on the choosen device.
The technology used in iNet scans on a very low level, therefore you even find machines that don`t want to be found, e. g. a Mac OS X computer running in stealth mode.
Ping:
Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network. The ping section in iNet enables you to find out wether an IP exists (if its ping service is enabled; otherwise you will get no response :-)). For your convenience we added a bookmark function to store often needed addresses.
Bonjour browser:
Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers. The Bonjour-Browser in iNet scans the connected local network for Bonjour services, detecting any hardware that ist connected via the Bonjour protocol (e. g. computer, router, printer,…) and any software running Bonjour services, e. g. iTunes or Filemaker.
Wake on lan:
The outstanding feature of our implementation is its easiness of usage and the simple setup process. For more information see iNet WOL, the stand-alone tool for WOL.
Portscan:
In version 1.0 of iNet portscan is available after performing a network scan.
Applications on devices communicate with the outside world through so called TCP ports.The implementation of Portscan in iNet checks TCP ports in the range of 1 to 1000 plus a number of standard ports that are often used. For all found open ports the service using this port is displayed by its real name if available.
Device Info:
The device info in iNet shows some information related to your iPhone or iPod touch, e. g. its name or its IP.
