Freeware NIC monitor

[wobbegong]

Does anyone know of a freeware LAN scanner that will report the make model and speed of all the client PC NICs?

TIA

[Addanc]

You probably need something like NMAP or Nessus

[wobbegong]

Thanks for the suggestion Addanc, I tried both but unfortunately they don't give me what I need (I've also tried Newt and Spiceworks).

[bellymonster]

Its quite tricky to determine the speed of a NIC remotely. It shouldn't be when you think about it but certainly in a Windows environment it is.

The information can be gleamed from the Registry of a Windows machine but it aint straight forward because each NIC manufacturer writes it to the registry in a slightly different way.

If all of your machines are identical then it is easier, you just have to determine the key in the registry and then use a remote registry tool to interrorgate each machine in turn.

If only microsoft would write this info in one consistant place.

[Addanc]

This sort of information should be available through SNMP assuming the NICs support it. There is probably a standard MIB for the NICs documented in one of the RFC.

[xchaotic]

And if they're connected to a managed switch, such as Cisco Catalyst series, then you can grab the speed/duplex/MAC info from the switch (via SNMP for instance).