pnscan
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pnscan is a parallel network scanner tool used to survey IPv4 TCPTCPA network protocol that delivers a reliable, ordered stream of bytes between two endpoints. It detects lost data and retransmits it. network services such as SSH, FTP, SMTPSMTPThe application-layer protocol used to send email between servers and from clients to servers; cyber tools use it to relay alerts, phishing simulations, or exfiltrated data over standard mail infrastructure., and web servers.
Summary
pnscan is an open-source command-line network scanner, free to use, that surveys IPv4 TCP services by probing host and port ranges with a dynamically sized thread pool. You run it directly from a shell, feeding it 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. blocks, hostname ranges, or a list of hosts piped in via stdin, and pointing it at ports or service names to identify what is listening, such as SSH, FTP, SMTP, or web servers. It suits people doing manual network reconnaissance or inventory work rather than teams wanting a managed scanning platform, sitting in the same space as older Unix-style scanning utilities. First committed in 2015 with four contributors, it has had no commits in the past year, so treat it as stable but no longer actively maintained.
pnscan is a parallel network scanner tool used to survey IPv4 TCP network services such as SSH, FTP, SMTP, and web servers.
How pnscan helps
Which hosts on this network segment are actually alive and reachable?
sweeps a CIDR block, address range, or hostname range with TCP probes and reports which addresses respond, skipping the broadcast-reserved first and last addresses of a CIDR block
Which of these machines are running SSH, FTP, SMTP, or web servers I don't know about?
probes the given port or service-name range on every host in scope and reports which ports are open, letting you match responses against expected services
What software and version is actually answering on a given port, versus what it's supposed to be running?
sends the specified data to the port and matches the response, so a banner or reply string can confirm the real service and version rather than trusting the port number
Can I get a inventory of a host list I already have, instead of a fresh subnet sweep?
reads a list of hosts piped in via standard input and scans exactly that set, printing a descriptive line for each as it works through them
Which servers respond with a distinctive banner I can sort or diff against a known-good list?
scans the chosen ports across the range and can sort results by address, so responses like a server identification string can be compared host by host
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 pnscan, 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 pnscan 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
Nothing shipped since we started watching. Releases and docs updates land here as they happen.
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in ptrrkssn/pnscan, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 0 ±0 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 0 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 0 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed not measured of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog 0 of 4 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 0
- Contributors / month 0
- Commits / month 0
- Stars 133
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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