Sometimes you need to know what the IP address is of a certain system in the network. For example if you plug in a new device and need to know
which IP address it got assigned. In Linux the tool nmap can be used to scan the IP range of your local network. With the right parameters
it will report on the different system it has found.
On the console execute the following command, where you replace 192.168.121 with the IP range of your own network:
sudo nmap -sP 192.168.121.0/24
This will output something similar to the example below from which, hopefully, you can deduce which of the systems below is your system:
dean@box:~$ nmap -sP 192.168.121.0/24
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-04-10 20:47 CEST
Illegal character(s) in hostname -- replacing with '*'
Nmap scan report for Network (192.168.121.1)
Host is up (0.0067s latency).
Nmap scan report for Box (192.168.121.103)
Host is up (0.000056s latency).
Nmap scan report for Molvin (192.168.121.109)
Host is up (0.0013s latency).
Nmap scan report for 192.168.121.160
Host is up (0.0038s latency).
Nmap scan report for GameConsole (192.168.121.166)
Host is up (0.039s latency).
Nmap scan report for Tablet (192.168.121.198)
Host is up (0.037s latency).
Nmap scan report for android-xxx (192.168.121.238)
Host is up (0.067s latency).
Nmap scan report for 192.168.121.253
Host is up (0.0081s latency).
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (8 hosts up) scanned in 4.42 seconds