Scanning Engine

The Batch User Manager Scanning Engine

Key to the operation of Batch User Manager is its ability to scan your network to locate and contact all of the machines in your domain—and to do so incredibly quickly.

Batch User Manager scans your network in several passes. First, it produces a rough list of machines via either LDAP queries or by obtaining the master browser list from your Primary Domain Controller. (Most network scanning utilities stop at this step.)

Batch User Manager then locates all machines which have ever been connected to your domain by reading the Primary Domain Controller’s connection history. This allows it to locate machines which have been hidden from the LDAP directory and the master browser list. Even machines hidden using the method outlined in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 321710 are found with this method.

Batch User Manager then performs a massively parallel ping scan to determine which machines found during the previous scans are currently on your network. The only machines this step won’t find are machines that do not respond to pings (for example, with software or hardware firewalls). The ping scan is used to filter out offline computers.

Finally, Batch User Manager contacts every machine on your network, to determine if they have the local users and/or groups that you are searching for. Rather than doing this sequentially, as most tools, it contacts them in parallel. This prevents unresponsive machines from slowing down the process.

All of these operations are done with lightning speed—even on a domain with thousands of machines you will find that the entire process is completed in just seconds.