So let’s say you are connected to your local network at home or at work and you need to figure out the IP address of another computer on the network. How do you do it? Well there are a couple of ways you can determine the IP address of a different computer on the network.

In this article, I’ll write out some of the different methods I use to find a computer’s IP address on a network. Of course, there are different way depending on how much you already know. For example, if you know the name of the computer, you can quickly figure it out. If you don’t know the computer name, etc, then you have to resort to some other methods. And then there’s the case of not even knowing if the computer is currently on the network or not, which you can figure out using some nice tools.

Method 1 – Ping

The easiest way to figure out another computer’s IP address is to simply ping the computer. When you ping the computer, it will respond and you will also see the IP address. For example, below I have pinged another computer on my network from my Mac:

As you can see, I typed in aseem, the computer name and it responded with the IP address. On a mac, you can send a ping by going to Spotlight and typing in Network Utility. Click on Ping and type the name of the computer. On a Windows machine, you go to Start – Run – CMD or Start and then type in CMD in the search box and type ping name, where name is the computer name.

That’s pretty simple right! Well, now the issue becomes whether or not you actually know the computer name. If you don’t, then you have to use an IP scanner.

Method 2 – IP Scanner

The second way to figure out the IP address of another computer is to scan your network and see all the computers and devices on the network. You can use an IP scanner to accomplish this. The easiest one to use is Angry IP Scanner, which is a free and cross-platform tool.

The beta version works on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, making it an excellent choice for scanning for computers on a network. The other great thing is that it’s portable, meaning you don’t have to install it on your computer at all. You just download it and run it. So no extra registry entries or other files on your system.

When you load it, it puts in the IP address of the local computer in the IP Range boxes. If you want to scan the whole subnet, change the first value to xxx.xxx.xxx.1 and the second value to xxx.xxx.xxx.254. Then click Start and that will scan the entire subnet for any other hosts.

Under Hostname, you will see the name of the computer. Once you find the computer you are looking for, the IP address is in the first column. That’s pretty much it. Those are the two ways to find the IP address of another computer on your local network.