When you are handling large computer networks, you probably need an automated IP scanner application to check whether hosts are alive or not because it is tiring to ping or perform any types of checking one by one. If not, you are a penetration tester (pentester) or hacker who needs to scan a wide network. If you need to learn the basic concepts, go to my article Introduction to Simple Computer Network and Introduction to Simple Penetration Testing.
If you are still inexperienced or just prefer convenience, I recommend using graphical user interface (GUI) Angry IP scanner available on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. All you need to do is input the ip range and start scanning for alive hosts.
If you prefer command line, you can try net mapper (NMAP). Here on Linux, I typed "nmap --help" to see command options.
In Linux I used "nmap -sn [ip address][subnet id]" to scan a wide range of IP address.
After knowing the host is alive and you want to get more information type "nmap [ip address]". Here I also used -O and -v command to get more information. You can also try this if you are sure that an IP address is alive but cannot be detected by ping due to some blocking reasons.
