Understanding the Debug Screen

Networks can be amazingly complex; new protocols (and new twists on old ones) appear all the time.  We do our best to accommodate many common situations but sometimes the default configuration of IP Scanner may not be suitable for your network environment.  For example, multicast DNS provides better information with regards to device names, but does not always reflect actual public DNS records for your network segment.

The Debug window, which is accessed from the IP Scanner Help menu, provides a means for power users to tweak IP Scanner’s behaviour.

What are these cryptic options at the bottom?

• DNS: enables DNS lookups.  Note: DNS lookups can generate considerable network traffic.
• DIG: use DIG for DNS lookups (spawns separate threads) instead of system APIs, DNSServiceQueryRecord(), etc.
• LCL: use local multicast DNS queries instead of designated DNS servers
• MAC: only display devices that have a valid MAC address
• ZZZ: enables support for Bonjour Sleep Proxy detection
• NBT: enables scanning for NBT / Windows File Sharing
• NDP: enable IPv6 scanning