Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] network discovery tools

[Florian Philipp <lists@binarywings.net>]

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Am 25.05.2011 21:45, schrieb Harry Putnam:
> There must be a number of people who post here that have had to do
> this problem.
> 
> Discover the addresses of computers on a home network that have
> connected by way of DHCP.  For example: Several wireless connections.
> 
> I've used static IPS for around 10 yrs, always seemed handier for
> things like ssh between home lan computers. 
> 
> But recently started using DHCP for wireless connections.  It must be
> such a popular method for some reason.
> 
> But when you do it that way, and say want to VNC or ssh or the like to
> something connected by a dhcp serving WAP then how do you find the
> address?
> 
> That is, besides something like accessing the WAP and checking the IPs
> connected to it.
> 
> Is there some quick and sure way to discover any IPs on the home lan?
> 
> Some kind of mapper tool?
> 
> 

While I personally prefer a combined DHCP+DNS server like dnsmasq, you
can also take a look at the whole Zeroconf/MDNS/Avahi/Bonjour stack.

I'm not really sure if you can configure common devices and Linux PCs to
use the DNS server for internet addresses and MDNS for local ones. In
theory, it should be possible since you can distinguish them (local
addresses should not be fully qualified _or_ have the domain .local).

net-misc/mDNSResponder, sys-auth/nss-mdns and net-dns/avahi are probably
good starting points.

Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp


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