To perform a ping sweep of 172.125.68.1-255 with Nmap, which command would you use?

To perform a ping sweep of 172.125.68.1-255 with Nmap, which command would you use?

• A. nmap -sn 172.125.68.1-255
• B. nmap -A 172.125.68.1-255
• C. nmap -p- 172.125.68.1-255
• D. nmap -sP 172.125.68.1-255

Answer: (A)

To identify which hosts are alive in a given range without scanning any ports, you use a host-discovery option that performs a ping sweep. The appropriate command uses the ping-sweep flag, which tells Nmap to just determine which addresses respond to probes and to report those that are up. Running nmap -sn 172.125.68.1-255 sends ICMP echo requests (and, when applicable on local networks, ARP probes) across the entire 172.125.68.1–172.125.68.255 range and returns only the hosts that replied. The other options would either enable more aggressive services discovery or port enumeration, or use an older, now deprecated, flag for host discovery. So for a simple ping sweep, -sn is the correct choice.

To identify which hosts are alive in a given range without scanning any ports, you use a host-discovery option that performs a ping sweep. The appropriate command uses the ping-sweep flag, which tells Nmap to just determine which addresses respond to probes and to report those that are up. Running nmap -sn 172.125.68.1-255 sends ICMP echo requests (and, when applicable on local networks, ARP probes) across the entire 172.125.68.1–172.125.68.255 range and returns only the hosts that replied. The other options would either enable more aggressive services discovery or port enumeration, or use an older, now deprecated, flag for host discovery. So for a simple ping sweep, -sn is the correct choice.