guessnet-scan8

Usage

Overview

Guessnet-scan tries to deduce network configuration data by watching network traffic at a given Ethernet interface.

After scanning network traffic for some time, guessnet-scan prints a configuration string suitable for inclusion in /etc/network/interfaces.

Note that guessnet-scan uses heuristics and wild guesses and that the resulting data is not guaranteed to be accurate. The program is intended to be used as a first try at getting network configuration data without bothering anyone.

Options

Options follow the usual GNU conventions,

--debug

Print debugging messages.

--help

Show a brief summary of commandline options.

--init-time=int

Time in seconds to wait for the interface to initialize when it is not found already up at program startup. Default: 3 seconds.

-t, --timeout=int

Time in seconds to watch for network traffic. Default: 5 seconds.

-v, --verbose

Operate verbosely.

--version

Show the version number of the program.

Scanning requirements

To correctly identify all data of the local network, guessnet-scan needs to see traffic related to a host in the local network and to the local gateway, if any.

To be able to identify the network gateway, guessnet-scan also needs to see some traffic directed to the external network: you can help the detection by generating some outbound IP traffic during the scan, for example by browsing a web page (without proxy) or using telnet to open a connection to some remote host.

Note that if you are connected to a switch, guessnet-scan won't probably be able to work, since the switch will isolate it from the network traffic that the other machines are generating.