Nmap Ping Sweep

Identifying what hosts are alive on a network can be a simple task with nmap. It’s a utility I have installed on my computer, often used for security analysis.

But sometimes I forget what flags to use for a simple ping sweep of active devices on a network.

nmap -sP <subnet>/<mask>

Here’s the output for my lab:

% nmap -sP 172.16.103.0/24
 Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020-11-06 22:47 PST
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.1
 Host is up (0.010s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.2
 Host is up (0.018s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.10
 Host is up (0.010s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.37
 Host is up (0.0015s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.46
 Host is up (0.078s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.62
 Host is up (0.069s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.63
 Host is up (0.013s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.64
 Host is up (0.069s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.69
 Host is up (0.037s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.70
 Host is up (0.037s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.71
 Host is up (0.015s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.72
 Host is up (0.046s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.74
 Host is up (0.055s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.76
 Host is up (0.068s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.77
 Host is up (0.072s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.78
 Host is up (0.087s latency).
 Nmap scan report for 172.16.103.85
 Host is up (0.041s latency).
 Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (17 hosts up) scanned in 4.44 seconds