Windows equivalent to nmap

Question

This answer suggests netstat as an equivalent to nmap and also states that nmap for windows does not work.

But I use nmap for an specific purpose and that is to see if a port of a network is open or not like this:

nmap -p port ip

And I learnt this command from here

Solution

The Windows equivalent to nmap is nmap. You can download a pre-built installer, complete with the CLI tools and the Npcap driver needed for advanced scanning options.

The reason the answerer says nmap won't work on Windows is because that thread is using it for a different purpose: instead of scanning a remote system, they discuss scanning "localhost". This was not reliable on Windows (depending on which scan mode one used) because the loopback interface works differently there – but it does not apply to your question. Scanning remote devices works the same way on all systems.

For only checking whether a TCP port accepts connections or not, there exist various "netcat"-type tools: nc.exe -v -v <host> <port> from different sources; plink.exe -v -raw -p <port> <host> from PuTTY. They will either connect successfully or show an error message of some kind.

Comments

[Shayan]

I googled netcat and the first search result was this eternallybored.org/misc/netcat turns out it's a fake upload packed with virus virustotal.com/#/file/… and I found the original uploader sourceforge.net/projects/nc110/files

[user1686]

Doesn't look fake to me. VirusTotal detects it as literally netcat – because so many lazy malware authors tend to use it instead of writing their own code. (Note that there are five, maybe more, different implementations of netcat – some forks of the original, some fully independent like BSD netcat – so the "original" doesn't hold much.)

[bonsaiviking]

Of note: Nmap can scan localhost on Windows if Npcap is installed or if you use the -sT (TCP Connect scan) option. Also, Nmap comes with a Netcat replacement called Ncat.exe