Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with something called “gray zone” computers. Basically, I wanted to see if I could figure out which computers on my network were, you know, kinda there but not really doing much.
Figuring Out the Plan
First, I needed a plan. I couldn’t just go poking around randomly. I figured I needed to:
- Find all the computers that were actually on the network.
- See which ones were actually doing something.
- Compare the two lists and see what’s left. Those would be my “gray zone” machines.
Getting the Active List
I started by trying to ping every computer in my local network’s IP address range. It’s like calling out and seeing who answers. I grabbed a simple script and hammered through the * was a long shot list.
Checking What’s Up
Next, I needed to get a bit more detailed. I mean, a computer might respond to a ping, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually doing * this part, I focused on checking some basic stuff, CPU usage, memory usage, just to see if the computers were under any kind of load.
The Big Comparison
After I had these two lists – the “alive” computers and the “busy” computers – it was time to compare them. I used basic excel function for * ones that showed up on the “alive” list but not on the “busy” list? Those were my suspects. The gray zone machines!
The Results (and Some Headaches)
So, what did I find? A bunch of computers. Some were old test machines, some were just sitting idle,It’s not a perfect system, of course. A computer might be doing something important that doesn’t show up in my simple checks. But it’s a start!
It was a cool little project, and it definitely gave me a better idea of what’s happening on my network. Now, if I want to get even more detailed, I could start looking at things like open ports, running services but I’m happy with the simple checks for now.
