How to Identify Devices on a Network?

How are Devices in Network Identified?

The internet and traditional mail are similar in many ways. We have a MAC address as a physical identifier rather than a home address. We have MAC addresses rather than names. Together they deliver the information to your door.

We require both, an IP address and a MAC address to establish communication between two networked devices. The TCP/IP protocol transfers data from one network to another using the IP address. The MAC address is used to route data to the correct network device.

Let's take another example to help you understand this:

If someone wants to send you a letter, they need your home address. Similarly, your computer also requires an address so that other computers on the internet can connect without being confused when sending data to another computer. Because of this, every computer in the world has a unique IP address.

IP Address

A device on the internet or a local network is identified by its specific IP address, which is different from other addresses. IP stands for "Internet Protocol".

It is the core set of rules that governs the format of data sent via the internet or local network. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigns IP Addresses to all the devices connected to its network.

Finding Out Your IP Address

You can discover your IP address in a variety of ways. The simplest method would be to enter "what is my IP address" into a search engine like Google.

For Windows users, navigate to Start > Settings > Network & internet and choose the Wi-Fi network you're connected to obtain your IP address. Locate your IP address next to "IPv4 address" under Properties.

MAC Address

In computer networking, the physical address that identifies each device on a given network is called the Media Access Control (MAC) address. It is also known as Physical address, hardware address, or BIA (Burned In Address). It is provided to every device's NIC (Network Interface Card), allowing internet access.

• It is 12-digit and 64-bit long, the first 24 bits are utilized for the OUI (Organization Unique Identifier), and the remaining 24 bits are used for NIC/vendor-specific information.
• It operates on the OSI model's data link layer.
• It is supplied by the device's manufacturer and included in its NIC, which is ideally fixed and cannot be modified.

How to Find MAC Address in Windows?

1. Fire up Command Prompt.
2. In Command Prompt, type ipconfig/all and press Enter.
3. And locate the Physical Address or HWaddr field.
4. Your MAC Address should be in the format: F:F:F:S:S. For example 00-14-22-04-25-37

Difference between MAC Address and IP Address

The device on the network may be recognized using both its MAC address and its IP address. The following list of distinctions between the two is significant:

Ping

Ping, a computer network management tool, is used to determine whether or not a host is accessible over an IP network. It is supported by almost all operating systems with networking capabilities, including the vast majority of embedded network administration software.

Ping calculates the time it takes for transmissions to travel from the source host to the destination computer and back. The word is derived from active sonar, which uses sound pulses and echoes detection to find items beneath the surface of the water.

Working of Ping

Ping transmits data with the help of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets. An ICMP echo request is sent to the target host and waits for an ICMP echo response.

It reports errors, packet loss, and a statistical summary of the results, typically including the lowest and maximum round-trip timings, mean, and standard deviation of the mean.

The ping utility's command-line arguments and output differ among its several implementations. Options may include:

• The payload size.
• The number of tests.
• The number of network hops (TTL) a probe can travel.
• The gap between requests.
• The amount of time to wait for a response.

Several systems include the IPv6-compatible implementation of ping, and ping6 to test IPv6 network environments.

Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)

The Address Resolution Protocol is a layer 2 protocol used to translate MAC addresses to IP addresses.

All hosts on a network may be found using their IP address, although NICs use MAC addresses rather than IP addresses. ARP is the protocol that connects an IP address to a MAC address.

Working of ARP

Consider that a device wishes to interact with another device over the internet. ARP broadcasts a packet to all the devices on the source network.

The network devices remove the data link layer header from the protocol data unit (PDU) and send the packet to network layer 3 of OSI, where the network ID of the packet and the network ID of the destination IP are checked.

If it's equal, it responds to the source with the MAC address of the destination. Otherwise, the packet reaches the network's gateway which broadcasts the packet to the devices to which it is connected with an address.

The procedure continues until the second-to-last network device in the path arrives at the destination. At this point, it is verified, and ARP responds with the destination MAC address.

How to Identify the Devices in Your Network?

There are many ways to check how many devices are connected to my network. You can quickly discover what's connected to your network, provided you should have internet access at home and a web browser.

The method below is straightforward and doesn't require any extra software. You need to follow a few easy steps:

1. Log into the administrative IP address of your router. Typically, it is 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
2. Launch a web browser on your PC or mobile device, enter your default gateway IP address, and press Enter.
3. Use the administrator username and password to log in. For the default credentials, consult the router's documentation.
4. You should be able to see the devices connected to your network on the router's home page or in the router's administrative panel (the interface may vary depending on the router's make and model).

In the administrative UI, you will get the details of a device's connection status, such as whether it is online or offline or how long it has been connected to the network.

It may sometimes list any wired or wireless devices linked to your router. Once you can identify which devices are connected, you can figure out which ones should be allowed to connect to your network and which ones are unknown.

Some routers also allow you to restrict devices from connecting to your network. If you find traces of unsolicited connections, immediately change your Wi-Fi SSID and password. The devices will be automatically disconnected.

How to Automatically Identify Unknown Devices on a Network?

It takes a lot of time and effort by IT teams to manually identify devices and their associated IP addresses in big, hybrid, or multi-vendor networks.

Network Device Discovery Software is an efficient answer for businesses with pressing issues like how to rapidly identify devices on the network since it automatically analyzes and tracks network devices and keeps an updated asset management system. With such software, you can easily monitor each connected device's IP address, MAC address, connection speed, and port information. Network discovery tools collect comprehensive device information using a variety of discovery protocols, including SNMP, LLDP, and CDP. These programs also employ ping sweeps to determine whether network hardware is active. Inactive devices or hosts are those that don't reply to ICMP echo queries sent by discovery tools.

Using dynamic network maps, modern network discovery technologies can also assist you in visually analyzing the logical and physical links between your devices. These maps are capable of spotting new hardware and topological changes in the network. Using network mapping, for instance, you can find every unauthorized link established by a compromised or malicious device and then stop it. Scanning tools enable you to dive down to the fundamental causes of network delay, detect anomalous activity, and assist in preventing security risks through packet-level analysis of network traffic.

How to Identify Devices Connected to your WiFi?

There are many ways to check how many devices are connected to my wifi. It can be done manually or automatically with the help of network scanning tools. In the next section, we discuss some ways to identify devices connected to your network.

Manually Identify Devices on a Wireless Network

One way to find network devices on wireless networks is to manually log in to the router's web interface. In-depth information on your network equipment, such as data transfer rate and packet loss, isn't provided by this, though. Typically, routers use the dynamic host configuration (DHCP) protocol to assign each device in a wireless network a distinct local IP address and MAC address so they can be identified.

The steps to locate network devices using the router's web portal are listed below:

1. Open a web browser and type the internal IP address of the router into the address bar. Use the methods listed below to determine the IP address:

   • For Windows: Fire up a Command Prompt session. In command prompt, type ipconfig and press Enter. The Default Gateway will show the IP address of your router.
   • For macOS: Click the Wi-Fi icon in the Menu Bar and open Network Preferences. Choose Advanced Settings from the drop-down menu in the bottom right corner. To locate the router IP address, go to the TCP/IP section in the following window.

2. Enter the login information in the browser tab to access the router's administrative interface. On the back of your router or in the associated user manual, you may find the login information. If you've forgotten the current password, reset the router.

The default home page for your router will show up when you log in. The Status, Wireless Client, or comparable area will list every device utilizing your wireless network.

Automatically Identify Devices on a Wireless Network

To help users more readily discover network devices on Wi-Fi, Network Scanning Tools are designed to give extensive information from wireless access points, such as SSID, device type, signal strength, and connected devices. These technologies can be helpful in business wireless networks for device detection as well as for locating and fixing network security and performance issues.

For instance, hackers frequently use flaws in business wireless access points or routers to infiltrate networks and take over. To steal private data, they employ strategies like packet sniffing, password theft, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Network Scanning Tools is software that detects network flaws and protects the system from unusual or abnormal activities.

The following are some of the most common network scanning tools.

• Nexpose Nexpose is a network scanning program that is used to do network scanning. To do the scan, it normally executes the Nmap scripts in the background. 
• Nessus Nessus is another network scanning tool used to ensure application security by magnifying flaws. It, like nexpose, checks particular files and directories containing data relating to the device's security setup.
• Nmap Nmap is another command-line-based network scanning program that is included with several Linux distributions. It performs a scan to determine the condition of a port using either the TCP or UDP protocols. It is fast and powerful enough to scan all 65535 ports.
• Zenmap Zenmap is the graphical user interface (GUI) based version of the Nmap network security scanner. Its GUI helps easily map out a network environment.