Fing Network Discovery Software

Martin Brinkmann
May 30, 2009
Updated • Jun 22, 2017
Software, Windows software
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7

The network discovery software Fing has been born out of the ashes of the much acclaimed Look@Lan network monitoring and discovery software.

The project is still in an early stage and comes with a command line version for the Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh operating system. This might turn away users who do not like working with the command line. The interactive mode that has been added the network discovery software on the other hand might convince them to give it a try nevertheless.

Fing needs to be installed before it can be used. It is compatible with all recent versions of Microsoft Windows starting with Windows XP. Note that it will install WinPCAP if not installed on the system.

Fing

Fing can be run with a single command from the command line, or started in interactive mode.  Please note that you need to run it with elevated rights on newer versions of Windows, as it won't detect any network adapters otherwise due to missing rights.

The interactive mode consists of a series of questions and simple answers provided by you. The first question for example after starting the interactive mode is about the mode the software should run in: options are discovery, scan or information

network discovery

  • Discovery: Will start the network discovery module. The user has to pick a network adapter and answer several additional questions. Fing will generate a network discovery report in the end.
  • Scan: Provides the means to scan a remote host, will display ports, services and firewalls running on that server.
  • Infos: Displays information about local and remote networks.

Fing offers a selection of output formats such as text, html or csv that can either be displayed directly in the console or saved in a file on the local computer system.

Verdict:

Fing is a fast network discovery tool for command line ninjas. The export functionality and speed are excellent, a graphical user interface would be desirable nevertheless.

Update: Fing and the developer website are no longer available. We have uploaded the latest working version of the application to our own server. Please note that we have done so for archiving purposes only, and don't support the program in any form. You can download Fing with a click on the following link: (Download Removed)

Fing ships without help file or documentation. Here are a few pointers:

  • You can run interactive mode using fing --interactive
  • To log the scan to text or csv files: use fing -o log,text log,csv,my-network-log.csv
  • To create a table output, use fing -o log,text table,stext table,html,"%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\network.html"
  • To generate a report and save session data to a folder use fing -n 192.168.1.0/24 -o table,html,c:\report\lan.html --session c:\report\lansessiondata
  • To run multiple pings to a list of target hosts: fing -p 192.168.1.1 www.ghacks.net www.startpage.com
  • To output ping data to a HTML or XML file use fing -p host -o html,ping.html or fing -p host -o xml,ping.xml
  • To scan a local or remote host, or an entire network: fing -s 192.168.1.1 or fing -s www.ghacks.net or fing -s www.ghacks.net/24
  • To ouput the discovery data: fing -s host -o html,report.html or fing -s host -o xml,scan.xm
  • To install Fing as a service on Windows and have it scan a network and generate a HTML report regularly use: fing -n 192.168.1.0/24 -o table,html,c:\report\lan.html --session c:\report\lansess --installservice FingService
  • To uninstall Fing as a service: fing --uninstallservice FingService
Summary
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Software Name
Fing
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Networking
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Comments

  1. IPonymous said on August 16, 2017 at 12:31 am
    Reply

    To the best of my knowledge Fing hasnt made a GUI for desktops, thats too bad, because the GUI on Android is Superb!

    .. If anyone knows otherwise I hope they let us know in the comments, Especially for Linux!

  2. A. Tawfique said on July 7, 2017 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    Fing and the developer website are still available, here’s where to download the latest version:
    fing.io/download-free-ip-scanner

  3. jimmy said on July 24, 2012 at 11:54 pm
    Reply

    I wonder if you could make it pull owner info or phone number off someones phone when they enter the range of your wifi, like if someone broke into your home you would have record of who it was.

  4. Ray said on October 23, 2009 at 12:39 am
    Reply

    Does this tool offer any advantages over nmap?

  5. Dani said on May 30, 2009 at 6:16 pm
    Reply

    The name is a bit unfortunate as it means ‘fart’ in hungarian :)

    1. T J said on June 24, 2017 at 12:40 pm
      Reply

      Good job it isn’t called “mist” (thin fog in english). “Mist” in german means “shit” :))

  6. Junkman said on May 30, 2009 at 2:19 pm
    Reply

    Though I’m not exactly a command line person, still I’m gonna give this tool a run on my machine. Thanks for sharing.

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