netdiscover
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Netdiscover is a network address discovering tool that sends ARPARPA network protocol that maps IP addresses to MAC addresses on a local Ethernet segment, letting tools resolve layer-3 targets to layer-2 hardware addresses for packet crafting or host discovery. requests and sniffs for replies, working on wireless, hub, and switched networks.
netdiscover -r 192.168.1.0/24 netdiscover -R -p -r 192.168.1.0/24 netdiscover --interface eth0 --insecure netdiscover -l targets.txt netdiscover -s 0.5 192.168.1.0/24
Summary
netdiscover is an open-source command-line tool that finds live hosts on a local network by sending ARP requests and listening for replies, which makes it useful on wireless or switched networks with no DHCP server to query. You run it against a specific CIDRCIDRA notation for a block of IP addresses, such as 10.0.0.0/24. The number after the slash says how many leading address bits identify the network. range and it reports responding hosts along with their MAC vendor, pulled from an OUI table it ships and updates. It suits network administrators and penetration testers doing local recon or wireless-network mapping rather than remote scanning, and it sits in the same space as ARP and host-discovery utilities bundled into broader recon toolkits, though nothing in its own documentation names a direct peer. Development dates back to 2005 and has drawn 8 contributors across three tracked releases, but there have been no commits in the past year, so it should be treated as stable rather than actively developed.
Netdiscover is a network address discovering tool that sends ARP requests and sniffs for replies, working on wireless, hub, and switched networks.
How netdiscover helps
Which devices are actually connected to this network right now, with no DHCP server to ask?
sends ARP requests across the range and lists every host that replies, updated live as replies come in
What kind of device is sitting behind an unfamiliar address on this network?
matches the responding MAC address against a bundled, updatable vendor table and shows the manufacturer name next to each host
Is there a rogue or unexpected device on this wireless segment?
surfaces every host that answers ARP traffic, so a MAC or vendor that doesn't belong to known equipment stands out in the list
Can I narrow a sweep to just the subnet I'm responsible for?
takes a CIDR range directly, so the scan covers exactly that block of addresses rather than guessing at boundaries
Will this scan work on a switched network with no broadcast visibility into other hosts' traffic?
relies on ARP requests and replies rather than sniffing existing traffic, so it still discovers hosts on switched networks where passive sniffing would miss them
Languages
Command line
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for netdiscover, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail netdiscover puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
7 entries
No entries match these filters.
- May 20251
- March 20251
- February 20221
- March 20151
- October 20051
- August 20051
- July 20051
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in netdiscover-scanner/netdiscover, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 0 −4 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 0 +0 joined · −1 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 0 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog 3 of 23 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 3
- Contributors / month 0
- Commits / month 0
- Stars 397
- other 100%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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