4sysops - FREE: SuperScan – an easy-to-use udp/tcp port scanner

Superscan is one of the oldest utilities in my toolbox. I still use it every now and then, even though nmap with Zenmap is a much more powerful network scanner. The main advantage of SuperScan is that it is very easy to set up and use. Whenever I am working on another desktop other than my own, and I need a tcp/udp scanner, I always download SuperScan.

If you want to try SuperScan, I recommend changing two of its default settings after you launch it: Disable “Host discovery” and set the “Scan type” to “connect”.

If Host discovery is enabled, SuperScan will send an echo request (ping) before it starts with the port scan. If the target computer is behind a firewall, you will get no results, even though some ports in the firewall are open.

SuperScan’s default scan type is “SYN”. It means that SuperScan won’t use the operating system’s network functions. Instead, it will create a raw IP packet with the SYN flag set. The SYN flag is used to initiate a TCP connection. Usually this scan type is faster because the scanner doesn’t have to complete the TCP handshake. The only problem is that it doesn’t work on Vista.

However, if you set the scan type to “connect”, SuperScan 4 will work fine on Vista. Just make sure that you run it with admin privileges. For this, you have to right-click on the exe and navigate to “Run as administrator”.