Watch entry 02 · comparison
Three scanners, one LAN, one evening
Same network, same hour, three tools. This entry records what each found, how long it took and what it is actually for — without pretending they compete on the same task.
The honest scoreboard
| Angry IP | LizardSystems | Engineer's Toolset | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swept /24 in | ~20 s | ~40 s | ~25 s |
| Found devices | 17 | 14 + 6 shares | 17 + 2 switch maps |
| Shows MAC vendors | yes | yes | yes |
| Share permissions | no | yes | partly, via SNMP |
| Switch port mapping | no | no | yes |
| Price | free, open source | free cap + licence | commercial |
What the numbers hide
Angry IP found three addresses LizardSystems listed as offline. LizardSystems found four shares and a printer that never answered ping — one of them writable by everyone, which is the kind of finding that justifies the whole evening. The Toolset's count looks unremarkable until you notice the two port maps: which wall socket each device lives behind, something the other two cannot produce at any speed.
Where each one wastes your time
- Angry IP: anything involving SMB. It will show the machine; it will not show the folder the whole office can write to.
- LizardSystems: Linux hosts. It speaks Samba fine, but the application itself is Windows-only, so the Linux laptop has to drive the audit.
- Engineer's Toolset: home networks. The price buys switch-level correlation a home router physically cannot offer.
Prefer the vendor's own page? Angry IP: angryip.org · LizardSystems: lizardsystems.com · SolarWinds: solarwinds.com.
Method, for the record
Wired connection from the same laptop for all three runs. Fresh boot of each program, default settings except the address range. Counts are what the tools themselves reported; no attempt was made to reconcile them into a single truth, because the disagreements are the interesting part.