OIS vs Advanced IP Scanner: Open Source vs Freeware (2026)

Advanced IP Scanner is one of the most downloaded network scanners for Windows, with tens of millions of installs. It's free to use and reasonably capable. But there's a critical distinction most users miss: it is not open source. OIS (Open IP Scanner) is. That single difference has meaningful implications for security, audibility, and long-term trustworthiness — and OIS adds several technical advantages on top.

Quick Comparison

1. The Open Source Difference: Trust and Audibility

Advanced IP Scanner is developed by Famatech, the same company that makes the commercial Radmin remote access software. While Advanced IP Scanner is free to download, its source code is not available for inspection. For a tool that runs on your network with elevated privileges, this is not a trivial concern.

OIS is MIT-licensed and every line of code is publicly available on GitHub. You can:

• Audit the source for any unexpected behavior
• Verify that no data leaves your machine
• Compile it yourself from source
• Fork it and adapt it for your specific environment
• Distribute it freely within your organization

In security-conscious environments — corporate IT, government, healthcare — this distinction often determines which tools are allowed to run at all.

2. ARP Scanning: Discovering Hidden Devices

Advanced IP Scanner uses ICMP ping to determine if hosts are alive. This misses any device that drops ICMP packets — a firewall configuration that is common on smartphones, IoT devices, and hardened servers. OIS combines ICMP with ARP scanning, which operates at Layer 2 and cannot be blocked by host-based firewalls on a local network. The result: OIS finds more devices, reliably.

3. Eight-Protocol Name Resolution vs Two

Advanced IP Scanner resolves names primarily using DNS and NetBIOS. OIS uses eight protocols: NetBIOS, SMB/NTLM, DNS, LLMNR, WSD, UPnP, SNMP, and WMI. This substantially increases the percentage of devices that appear with their actual names rather than as unnamed IPs — especially in environments with IoT hardware, network appliances, and non-domain machines.

4. HTTP Title Scraping

When OIS detects an open HTTP or HTTPS port, it fetches the page title and displays it inline. Advanced IP Scanner does not do this. In practice, this instantly labels router admin consoles, network switch interfaces, NAS web UIs, and IP camera dashboards — without a single browser tab.

5. PowerShell Deployment

Advanced IP Scanner requires you to download a file, run an installer (or find the portable version), and execute it. OIS is available with a single PowerShell command:

This is particularly useful for sysadmins who manage machines remotely or need a scan tool with zero persistent installation footprint.

When Advanced IP Scanner Makes Sense

Advanced IP Scanner has one feature OIS deliberately omits: built-in remote control. It integrates directly with RDP, Radmin, and shared folder access from the scan result list. If that workflow matters to you and you're not concerned about the closed-source nature, it remains a functional tool.

Verdict

For anyone who cares about open source transparency, auditability, and zero telemetry, OIS is the clear winner. It also delivers superior host discovery through ARP scanning and richer device identification through eight name resolution protocols. Advanced IP Scanner's one advantage — integrated remote access — is a feature most network scanners intentionally avoid to keep the tool focused on its primary job.