Create a List of Hosts on the Local Network
The menu choice for this operation is called 鈥淐reate a List of Hosts鈥? This operation creates an
ASCII text file listing the IP address, hostname, and Ethernet address for each host in the local
area network. The following figure shows the dialog box that will appear when the 鈥淐reate a List
of Hosts鈥?option is selected.
The dialog box asks for a subnet mask, since there might be networks where the last byte of the IP
address is further subdivided into smaller networks. Actually, the default subnet mask as shown
here would produce the same result, because any host beyond the local network will not show up
in the ARP cache. However, supplying the correct subnet mask would speed up this operation.
If the user doesn鈥檛 provide the filename to store the resulting list of hosts, the default filename is
鈥渘ewgroup.mp鈥? MP is the default extension for files created by this utility.
The utility doesn鈥檛 distinguish between printers and routers from workstations, and it can only
create a list of hosts in a local network, because any host beyond the local area does not show up
in the local machine鈥檚 ARP cache (the utility relies on the ARP.EXE utility to build a table of IP
and Ethernet addresses). Since this utility can be used in conjunction with other network
management applications, a table of IP and Ethernet addresses can also be obtained from other
more powerful applications. In any case, the System Administrator should review the contents of
the file to ensure proper format. The format of the list is similar to that of the HOSTS and
LMHOSTS files, except that these files don鈥檛 have a third field listing the Ethernet address.
Here鈥檚 a listing of the HOSTS file:
# Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corp.
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Chicago
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#
102.54.94.97
rhino.acme.com
# source server
#
38.25.63.10
x.acme.com
# x client host
127.0.0.1
localhost
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