To gather this information, network engineers rely on the Ping command. The simple command can help answer no end of connection issues.
While dealing with one computer or server at once may be straightforward. There are instances where you may need to ping multiple devices and IPs on the network simultaneously.
You can find how you can manually or use a helpful software tool to help you accomplish this task and others easily. (Read How to Hide Your IP Address)
How Do You Find the Range of an IP Address?
Conventional IP addresses (IPv4) comprise four numbers separated by periods. Each decimal is between 0 and 255. The entire IP address will be a 32-bit binary number divided into 4 x 8 bits or bytes.
DNS translates human-readable URLs into IP addresses for computers to understand.
Internet routers match rules that refer to the first digits of the IP to know where to send data packets. (Read How To Stop DNS Hijacking)
Understanding an IP Range
- IP addresses are divided into ranges, such as 192.168.0.1 – 192.168.0.255 for internal networks to make routing efficient.
- IP ranges are written with dash notation or expressed using a subnet mask. Similar to the IP address structure, they represent the leftmost digits of your IP address and are always set to 1 for any particular network.
- An additional number indicates the number of bits needs considering as part of the network’s prefix. 192.255.255.255/12 is such an example.
- IP addresses used to be divided into classes, and a network had a fixed number of IPs. The modern system of classless interdomain routing (CIDR) is proving to be more efficient. (pronounced cider)
- You can use online netmask calculators or a subnet calculator tool to translate between the notations and determine if an IP address matches a subnet.
Reserved IP
Certain IP addresses are reserved for specific purposes, including the following:
- 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255,
- 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
- 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255
The above addresses can’t be routed across the internet at any time.
Ranges from 127.0.0.0 – 127.255.255.255 are reserved and called loopback addresses, where computers message themselves. You find these used for connection problem-solving.
Can You Ping Multiple IP Addresses?
It can be difficult to determine device on a network is working and exchanging data. To test, administrators ping an IP address.
Ping is a command prompt utility using the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). It measures the time taken by data packets to reach a destination.
Ping tools send ICMP echo messages to hosts and listen for a response, known as echo reply (pong). (Learn How To Ban Evade 4chan)
Ping & Ping Sweep
Ping deals with a single host, whereas ping sweep helps ping IP addresses simultaneously using ICMP. It’s also possible to use Port 7 on a computing device to carry out a ping request rather than ICMP.
It’s a basic ICMP network scanning technique and determines a list of active and inactive IP addresses on a network.
You can use it to diagnose network type issues, downtime, and list dead hosts. Live hosts reply to ping sweep commands by sending an ICMP Echo reply. If no reply is sent across the line in a time frame, the results show the host has issues.
- You use Ping sweep to improving and maintain network security, and also:
- Discover IPs, live and including dead hosts on your network
- Scan IPs and see if they match network documentation
- Help detect rogue devices on the local network
Unlike the ease of ping, a ping sweep is more complex. You will need software scanner tools to accomplish this task.
How Do I Ping a Range of IP Addresses in CMD?
For example, all this is run on a Windows PC; most Windows versions will let you run the same commands.
Connections are via Ethernet cable that allows you to ping a device’s presumed address.
Here’s how a user can do this from the command line.
- Navigate to Windows start menu
- Type “cmd” and hit Enter to open the command prompt window
- Here you can use various commands to send queries from your computer. For instance, ping 192.168.1.1 may come back with a result if you have a device that has been assigned an IP by DHCP on your network.
- Hit Enter and the request is sent four times. You get a time-out failure or reply with round trip statistics, and the time is taken.
Continual ping
The command “ping 192.168.1.101 -t” starts a continuous ping. Replace the IP address with one that is specific to your needs. You can place the -t before or after the IP address.
Ctrl-Break stops the action and shows you the stats. Stop with Ctrl-C.
“ping –t 192.168.1.101 >Pingstat. txt” outputs results to a text file called “Pingstat.txt.”
Ping range of IP addresses
Type in the following command
for /l %i in (1,1,254) do @ping 192.168.1.%i -w 10 -n 1 | find “Reply”
This pings every address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254 once. It waits for 10ms for a reply and shows IPs that reply
How Do I Ping a Range of IP Addresses in PowerShell?
You can also do the same sort of thing in Windows 10 PowerShell without needing a third-party device software tool to scan for devices on the network.
Open the Windows PowerShell window and enter the following commands.
# PowerShell Win32_PingStatus to ping a range of IP addresses
$i = 1
$AddrIP = “192.168.50.”
Do { $IpHost = $AddrIP + $i
$Pingo = Get-WmiObject Win32_PingStatus -f “Address=’$IpHost’”
$Pingo | Format-Table Address, StatusCode -auto; $i++
}
until ($i -eq 254)
Key of command variables
- $i: Last octet of the first DHCP IP Address. (e.g DHCP range starts at 192.168.50.25, $i = 25)
- $AddrIP: These are your first three IP range octets
- until ($i -eq 254): This value needs replacing with the last octet of the last IP address in a range.
- StatusCode result of 0 means there is a host response from a device.
If you have a remote network, you can still carry out these request tests from any location. You can also use a VPN to connect to a rmote server securely.
Doing this means no one can gain an insight into your internal IP ranges using a network scanner type of device or packet sniffer to gather information.
A VPN uses the best military-grade encryption to secure all devices and connection lines used, including mobile devices.
A VPN is worth using any time you are on0line and like to keep a file secure or any time you do online banking. (Read Google Chrome Safe Mode)
