P is the abbreviation for Internet Protocol and is practically an identification number your computer has in order to be recognized. Due to this number, your computer can communicate with other machines in your network. It is the computer equivalent for street addresses or phone numbers (for VoiceIP services).

The software tested now is an IP scanner. This type of software pings (tests to see if the hosts across a computer network can be reached) the IP addresses (usually from a user defined range) and tells you if the computers using them are online or not. Being a scanner it also gives you the IP of the machines in your network.

Advanced IP Scanner is a Famatech LLC product and the downloaded archive takes almost 300KB. It is free, but you can discover its full power by using it together with Radmin ($35), a remote control software of the same developer.

The interface is great looking and practically invites you to snoop around your network to see who's around. It contains all the options necessary to scan for computers and more (you will see what I am talking about).

The menu bar and the toolbar give the user access to absolutely all the commands. The only difference between the menu bar and the toolbar is that the latter has a visual display of the commands due to the icons.

The IP Scan range is for entering the first and last IP addresses. Just input the IP range and the software will scan the network inside that interval and will give you precise information on the online computers (they will appear as "alive", while the offline ones will appear as "dead"). Now press Scan button and Advanced IP Scanner will provide all the IPs in your network that are alive or dead.

In the Scan list there will be displayed the descriptions of the computers and from here you can perform different actions to the computers in the list. Using Advanced IP Scanner in combination with Radmin you can even take full control of the remote computer.

Once you have found the "alive" computers on your network you can add them to a list, save it on your computer and later load it and press rescan button to get the information (don't forget to select the computers in the list). This way the software will scan only the computers in your list and you will save a lot of time.

After scanning the network for the IPs in the list, you can enter the properties menu of that computer and get the info (name, MAC address, user name, computer name and group name) and in here you can even add some comments about that machine.

Right-clicking an IP address opens a menu from where the user can select a certain action to be performed on the remote computer. You can choose to delete computers from the list, get NetBIOS info (user, computer, group).

If you choose the Remote Shutdown option, a menu will pop up to make the necessary settings. In order to remote shutdown a computer you have to specify the authorization type (current user or specific login/password). The default time until shutdown is 60 seconds, but you can change it to a larger or smaller value.

You can even set Advanced IP Scanner to display a user defined message on the remote machine. If you choose Force shutdown remote machine the computer will turn off immediately, without saving anything. You also have the option of rebooting the remote computer.

The user can use Advanced IP Scanner to explore the computers in the network (of course, the basic condition is for them to have files shared). If you want to fully explore a computer, use Radmin options and you can view, take full control, file transfer or shutdown the remote computer.

The Wake On Lan feature has always been my favorite as it "resurrects" the remote computer. Of course, there are some conditions in order to do that. A network card with a WOL support is needed and a connection between the network card and the motherboard is also a must. After all this is accomplished, you can remotely boot the machine.

The Good

The interface looks great and is very easy to use. The software is free and includes lots of useful network options.

It doesn't matter the IP address range. The first IP can have a higher value than the last one; the software will perform a scan between the defined interval.

Saving the list of network computers saves a lot of time because you do not have to perform a full scan between a large interval and wait too much. The software will scan only for the IPs in the loaded list.

The Bad

The software works even more astonishing combined with Radmin. It is a drawback because Radmin costs $35.

The Truth

Advanced IP Scanner is truly an amazing tool. It is a very useful software for scanning the network just to see who your "neighbors" are.

I recommend using it together with Radmin, a real easy to use remote control software.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: