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Nmap (Network Mapper) is an indispensable tool for network administrators, security professionals, and IT enthusiasts. It’s designed for network discovery, security scanning, and auditing.

This guide will take you through the basics to more advanced features of Nmap, ensuring you have the knowledge to conduct comprehensive network analyses.

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Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your skills, this tutorial has something for everyone.

1. Basic Nmap Syntax and Options

Nmap is a powerful command-line tool used for network discovery and security auditing. To get started, the basic syntax for Nmap is as follows:

nmap [Scan Type] [Options] {target specification}

Example Command:

nmap -sV -sC -O -n -oA nmapscan 192.168.0.1/24

This command tells Nmap to perform service version detection (-sV), use default scripts (-sC), attempt to identify the operating system (-O), not resolve DNS (-n), and output the scan in all formats (-oA) with the base filename nmapscan for the target network 192.168.0.1/24.

See most of the command with -h option, Nmap is one of the most complete existing tool for network scan!

2. Discovering Devices on a Network

Discovering devices is often the first step in a network scan. Nmap offers several methods to discover active hosts.

• Ping Sweep (-sn): Quickly identifies active hosts without scanning ports.