Network Mapper

Phase 1 — Data parsing & IP handling

  • Parse a CIDR input (e.g., 192.168.0.0/24) into individual IP addresses.
  • Validate input format and ensure only valid IPv4 addresses are accepted.
  • Provide a simple function to iterate over IPs in the subnet.

Functional result: user can input a CIDR, and the program generates a list of valid IP addresses for scanning.

Phase 2 — Basic connectivity scanning

  • Implement a function to check whether an IP is online (e.g., via a ping or socket attempt).
  • Limit checks to a predefined set of common ports or user-specified ports.
  • Handle timeouts gracefully to avoid long delays.

Functional result: program identifies which IPs are online and which ports respond, without crashing on unreachable hosts.

Phase 3 — Command-line interface & output formatting

  • Accept input from command line: network_mapper.py 192.168.0.0/24 [port1, port2, ...].

  • Display results in a readable format, e.g.:

    192.168.0.1:80 (HTTP)
           :443 (HTTPS)
192.168.0.105:445 (SMB)

  • Map common ports to service names where possible.

Functional result: user runs the program and receives a clean, readable summary of online hosts and their open ports.

Phase 4 — Robustness & polish

  • Handle invalid inputs (bad CIDR, invalid port numbers).
  • Implement basic exception handling for network errors.
  • Ensure program exits cleanly if interrupted.
  • Allow sorting of output by IP or by port, for clarity.
  • Make the CLI easy to interact with and visually pleasant, using coloured text output.
  • Allow saving the identified IP:port pairs to a .txt file.

Functional result: program is stable, handles edge cases gracefully, and consistently produces correct results for valid inputs.