this should work when the hosts on your network react to ICMP packages (ping) (>JDK 5):
public void checkHosts(String subnet){
int timeout=1000;
for (int i=1;i<255;i++){
String host=subnet + "." + i;
if (InetAddress.getByName(host).isReachable(timeout)){
System.out.println(host + " is reachable");
}
}
}
invoke the method for a subnet (192.168.0.1-254) like this:
checkHosts("192.168.0");
didnt test it but should work kinda like this. Obviously this only checks the 254 hosts in the last byte of the ip address…
check:
http://download-llnw.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/net/InetAddress.html#isReachable%28int%29
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-do-icmp-ping-in-java-jdk-15-and-above/
hope that helped