Wireless Network Watcher is a small utility that scans your wireless network and displays the list of all computers and devices that are currently connected to your network. For every computer or device that is connected to your network, the following information is displayed: IP address, MAC address, the company that manufactured the network card, and optionally the computer name.
You can also export the connected devices list into html/xml/csv/text file, or copy the list to the clipboard and then paste into Excel or other spreadsheet application.
System Requirements And Limitations
- This utility works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003/2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
- This utility can only scan a wireless network that you’re currently connected to. It cannot scan other wireless networks.
- In rare cases, it’s possible that Wireless Network Watcher won’t detect the correct wireless network adapter, and then you should go to ‘Advanced Options’ window (F9), and manually choose the correct network adapter.
- although this utility is officially designed for wireless networks, you can also use it to scan a small wired network.
Using Wireless Network Watcher
Wireless Network Watcher doesn’t require any installation process or additional dll files. In order to start using it, simply extract the executable file (WNetWatcher.exe) from the zip file, and run it. If you want, you can also download WNetWatcher with full install/uninstall support (wnetwatcher_setup.exe), so a shortcut for running WNetWatcher will be automatically added into your start menu.
After running WNetWatcher, it automatically locates your wireless adapter, and scans your network. After a few seconds, you should start see the list of computers that are currently connected to your network.
If from some reason, WNetWatcher failed to locate and scan your network, you can try to manually choosing the correct network adapter, by pressing F9 (Advanced Options) and choosing the right network adapter.
Background Scan
Starting from version 1.15, there is a new option under the Options menu – ‘Background Scan’.
When it’s turned on, Wireless Network Watcher first make the regular fast network scan to discover all current connected devices. After that, a continuous background scan is activated to discover when new devices are connected to your network. The background scan is slower and less intensive then the regular scan, so it won’t overload your computer and you can leave it to run in the background while using other programs.
When the background scan is running, a counter of the scan process is displayed in the second section of the bottom status bar.
When the background scan is used, you can use the ‘Beep On New Device’ option to get a beep sound when a new device is detected.
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