In this article today it is time to analyze First Row’s Network Scanner , a free Android app to monitor your WiFi network and also your local home network. With it we can scan our WiFi, and also, we can use network tools to do fairly advanced checks and diagnostics, to have the entire network under control.
Let’s start by mentioning some of its basic functionalities:
- Verify hosts in a range of possible addresses on the network.
- It offers the provider search function by MAC and shows the manufacturer of the network equipment.
- We can get IP, MAC addresses and host names and copy them to the clipboard.
- Port scanner that recognizes all registered devices.
To start we are going to download Network Scanner from First Row from the Google Play Store from here:
The first time we start the application, the following screen will appear.
Here he says that in order to use this application you must be over 16 years old. Then we choose the first option, if we want it to show relevant ads to our liking. The second would be less relevant ads but it maintains a little more privacy. Choose the one you want.
Once we accept the First Row Network Scanner main screen will appear. If we slide our finger to the right towards the second screen, it will ask for permission so that it can show us more details such as the name of our network.
In this case, it will ask us to activate the location permission which is a very common request in network apps and we give it to allow .
Once we are back on the main screen, if we press to the right of any device it will give us three options.
Each one of them does is copy the information to the clipboard. There for example we would have list to copy the MAC address. Now we are going to do the test with Copy IP so that we have it ready to copy from the clipboard.
If we click on any device on the network to the left, we would get new options.
We would have three options:
- Change host : to customize the name of the computer and change the icon.
- Copy data : to copy to the clipboard and it would be another way to access what I have explained before.
- Tools : network tools.
Let’s start with Change host .
Here we have two options:
- Chage icon : to change the image of the connected equipment.
- Change host : to put a name to better identify it.
These are the icons that we could put on our devices, being able to choose from a wide variety.
As you can see now, the icon of a screen has been changed to that of an Android smartphone. In addition, I have given it as the Sony Mobile host name to better identify it. Then what we are going to do is click on Tools .
Here he offers us to be able to use three tools.
With the first Scan ports tool we are going to do a scan of the ports of our router.
The second would be Traceroute that indicates the devices through which it passes until reaching the final destination. In this case I have chosen a Google DNS.
To finish with Tools, the third is Ping that we will test using the router’s gateway.
To the right of the main screen we have another that also offers us important.
Among them we have our external or public IP, name of our Wifi network, connection speed, channel and other network parameters.
In the upper right corner represented by three vertical points we have the Network Scanner configuration options. The first of these is Sorting, which allows us to order our devices according to the criteria we set for them.
Then we also have a Tools section with network tools. Here, the difference with the previous one, is that it adds an IP calculator and a remote network scanner.
Also within the options of the app options we have Settings that refers to the general settings.
Here we can change to a lighter theme by clicking on Light or modify the port scan. So we would be clear mode after restarting the app.
As you can see Network Scanner offers us a complete range of tools to monitor and control our WiFi networks, and also the wired network with multiple built-in tools, without a doubt, a highly recommended Android application.