Colasoft MAC Scanner FAQ

I wanna scan a IP range out of my allocated IP scope, the program just blocked me from inputing any thing. It just displays the only IP range as my pc is using.

A: The mac scanner is binded to the IP address you have configured on your NIC. For example: you are accessing the network by IP address 192.168.1.2/24, then the mac scanner will read the information from your NIC and allow you scan only the IP range 192.168.1.0/24.

I have tried the MAC Scanner PRO. It is good to be customizable. I can now input the IP range I would like to scan, but, Hey nothing appears in the frame. I can ping the IP address in that range but nothing, it's just nothing displayed after a scan.

A: The Mac scanner works by ARP protocol. As we know, ARP is a protocol without IP header which means it can not go across layer 3 devices such as router(gateway), or L3 switch. Also we know that communication between different IP range (networks) has to be handled by the gateway. So here is the result --- MAC scanner can not work over different networks. This is technically not feasible rather than a drawback of the program itself.

Sometimes I saw multiple IP addresses listed under one single MAC address. How does this happen?

A: Acturally this happens all the times. Normally users can configure more than one IP address on one NIC but one IP address can only be allocated to one NIC. For example, you can add many IP address to specify yourself and even more than one gateway in Microsoft Windows OS, advanced TCP/IP settings.

Another scenaro, if there any virtual machine hosted in your system, and they are bridged to the physical NIC, They will consequently be exposed to the network, and some virtual machine use multiple IP address over a single MAC address.

I had saw a lot of MAC addresses listed in the MAC Scanner, but never ever once I saw any mac begin with 1, or 2, or any number not 0. Hey this is weird.

A: There are mac addresses begin with F or other values. They are broadcast or multicast, and only appears as the destination addresses. Since the mac scanner is designed to find out the active IP addresses and corresponding mac addresses in a broadcast domain, each of the mac listed should belongs to a physical existing device. Only the mac address which can be used as a source to send data can be listed.

I tried the "find" button but got the notification "the next specified text was not found". What is this for?

A: After scanned a hundreds of hosts, there might be more entries listed in the frame if there are multi IP hosted in one mac. It would be a huge and dazzling work to find the right information from them. The "find" is just works as a match tool, It will find all the matched context you inputed for you. Notice, it only works after scan. I think that why you have never find anything match your inputed condition.

Is there any way I can save the data after scanned the network, and read them when I need to compare the difference upon time elapse? And sometimes I need to combine data from different networks so that I can see have a global view over my entire intranet.

A: It is not supported to export data into rereadable file format in the version 1.0. However, the Mac scanner 2.0 Pro can export data and then import them, and this offered a more powerful interface for data management.

I was wondering why there is no information provided in the manufacturer collum? Sometimes there are manufacturers like IBM, Linksys, Cisco, H3C, but sometimes there is just, nothing.

A: The first 24bit of each NIC MAC address is specifically assigned to different manufacturers. The MAC Scanner uses the database of first 24bits allocation to specify the manufacturer of each NIC. However The allocation updates upon times, new manufacturers appeal for new values. We can only guarantee that we update the database as soon as we can but there is a release schedual of each product. Please understand it is not possible to keep the data synchronized all the time.

I've tried to scan the network. But it seems refused to add in hosts more thant 100. How rediculous. Is it the limitation of free tool?

A: Actually, the utmost value of MAC Scanner is 100. The reason is simple: in a broadcast domain, there should not be hosts more than 100, or the switch or hub, is going to be jamed with broadcast traffic.

And that is why vlan been used in the modern network designations.