C# FAQs Series: Get Names of All Machine on LAN

In C# FAQs Series: We discuss most frequent questions asked on C# forums.

In this session we will see how to get all machines connected on LAN using C# code. 

You can use windows built-in tool net.exe to achieve this. All you need to do is start it using Process  class and send view command.

using System.Diagnostics; 

using System.IO; 

    //Gets the machine names that are connected on LAN 

 Process NetworkUtility = new Process(); 

 NetworkUtility.StartInfo.FileName = "net.exe"; 

NetworkUtility.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true; 

 NetworkUtility.StartInfo.Arguments = "view"; 

 NetworkUtility.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true; 

 NetworkUtility.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false; 

 NetworkUtility.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true; 

 NetworkUtility.Start(); 

 StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(NetworkUtility.StandardOutput.BaseStream,  NetworkUtility.StandardOutput.CurrentEncoding); 

string line = ""; 

while ((line = streamReader.ReadLine()) != null) 

 { 

      if (line.StartsWith("\\")) 

      {             listBox1.Items.Add(line.Substring(2).Substring(0, line.Substring(2).IndexOf(" ")).ToUpper()); 

      } 

} 

 streamReader.Close(); 

NetworkUtility.WaitForExit(1000); 

All machines on LAN will be added in listBox1.