It works by combining several discovery methods:
- mDNS and SSDP scanning
- ARP cache reading (after triggering ARP resolution via TCP/UDP sweeps)
- OUI lookups to identify device manufacturers
It also includes:
- A fast, keyboard-driven TUI (powered by tview)
- An optional built-in port scanner
- Daemon mode with a simple HTTP API to fetch devices
- Configurable theming and behavior via a YAML config file
Why I built it:
Mainly to learn, I've been programming in Go for about a year now and wanted to combine learning Go with learning more about networking in one single project. I've always been a big fan of TUI applications like lazygit, k9s, and dive. And then the idea came to build a TUI application that shows devices on your LAN. I am by no means a networking expert, but it was fun to figure out how ARP works, and discovery protocols such as mDNS and SSDP.
Example usage:
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# install via HomeBrew brew tap ramonvermeulen/whosthere brew install whosthere
# or with go install go install github.com/ramonvermeulen/whosthere@latest
# run as TUI whosthere
# run as daemon whosthere daemon --port 8080
---
I'd love to hear your feedback, if you have ideas for additional features or improvements that is highly appreciated! Current platform support is Linux and MacOS.
Some feedback of what I found on my network, as compared to some other scanners I've used.
I've never seen anything that can beat Advanced IP Scanner at finding hostnames. I've never even found a way to get arp or nmap to get close to Advanced IP Scanner; I've tried dozens of suggested commands of each, all with no luck. Here's the results of my scans:
Alive hosts: 309
Unkown: 201
With hostnames: 80
https://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/
####################################
I also tried a program called Angry IP Scanner:
Hosts scanned: 510
Hosts alive: 315
With hostnames: 75
####################################
whosthere
Devices: 318
With hostnames: 54
It would be great it it could show the reverse lookup of the IPs as on my LAN everything has a name and if it hasn't then it is probably an interloper!
Generally speaking, the Debian package management system is really not a place I would look for prompt updates when new versions of software are released.
This project appears to be using github.com/rivo/tview which is is really solid.
1. It only scans the subnet of the configured network interface.
2. The scan is limited to a maximum size of a /16 subnet.
3. It runs just once every 5 minutes (this interval should be made configurable, currently still hardcoded).
If a subnet larger than /16 is configured, whosthere will log a warning and only scan the first /16 portion of that subnet. As of now the network interface itself is configured via the YAML file. I agree it would be a good idea to add command-line flags for more of these settings to make them easier to adjust.
Specifically it needs to pull additional detail out of proxmox servers and opnsense plus deduce where things are physically based on latency.
Thats a whole lot easier if it doesn’t need to work universally & you can hardcode some assumptions
$ go install github.com/ramonvermeulen/whosthere@latest
# golang.design/x/clipboard
clipboard_linux.c:14:10: fatal error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
14 | #include <X11/Xlib.h>
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.There should be a build tag to disable clipboard, that'd be the easiest way around this.
I hesitated a bit bringing in this feature. On one hand, I really like to have clipboard support, on the other hand, I don't like that it requires you to change from static to dynamic linking (and have the x11 dependency).
Maybe I could write an install.sh script for installation that detects the OS and fetches the correct version/tarball from the Github release.
How about this PR? https://github.com/ramonvermeulen/whosthere/pull/29
It switches to using github.com/dece2183/go-clipboard, which supports Mac, Windows, Linux (X11 + Wayland) and Android.
On the other hand, I also don't want whosthere to be depended on a fork that isn't maintained anymore. I will think about this trade-off, but I am also interested how others look at this problem.
When reading some blog posts, I found often a solution where it sends out an UDP dial to for example 8.8.8.8:53 because you can then get the network interface back from the connection it's local address. As fallback I implemented to pick the first non-loopback interface that is up.
Would be open to suggestions to do this in a better way!
router, _ := routing.New()
iface, _, _, _ := router.Route(net.ParseIP("8.8.8.8"))
fmt.Println(iface.Name)
Couldn't run it on macOS Tahoe. I believe this requires me lowering the security to allow it, which is something I would rather not doing.