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NetScanTools 4.2 User Manual
IDENT Server Tab
About
The IDENT Server tab controls the activities of the NetScanTools identification protocol server as defined in RFC 1413. The Ident
Protocol (formerly known as Authentication Server Protocol) is intended to provide a means for determining the identity of a user of
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a TCP connection. Some services, most often Finger and sometimes POP3 mail servers, require an IDENT server to be running
on your system before they will respond with the information you are requesting from them. The IDENT server listens for incoming
connections on port 113 (decimal).
Information Returned by this Feature
This feature logs incoming IDENT requests. This server does send back a response to the source of the IDENT request---however,
only the information you wish it to see.
A sample log file fragment is shown here.
The format of the log file is date and time, followed by incoming IP address, then our source port number, a comma, the target port
number that we are connecting to with another application, the operating system type (WIN32 always), the code page used and
finally the username of the user whose process is accessing the target port on the other machine.
This example log file fragment is showing connections to POP3 (110) to get email from the server, connections to an FTP (21) port
and connections to an SMTP (25) port to send email. Using the first entry as an example, the IDENT server is getting a request from
the target machine (204.122.16.4) to identify the user who is connecting to port 110 from the user's machine port 3120. The IDENT
server send backs a string to the target machine which is of the exact form:
3120,110 : USERID : WIN32 , US-ASCII : user
This is telling the target machine that the person attempting to get email from the POP3 server has a login name of 'user' and is
running on a WIN32 machine (95, 98 or NT). Of course, we chose the login name 'user' ahead of time.
Configuring the IDENT Server
This section discusses the configuration of the server. Press the Configure button to reach the setup dialog box. This dialog box
controls the type of message returned to the host making the IDENT request. The Response Message Type defaults to USERID.
When USERID is selected, the User Name Reported Back to the requesting host is exactly what is entered in the entry area. In this
example 'user' has been entered. It can be anything; the default is 'user'.
NOTE: all IDENT requests receive the information as specified in the Configure dialog box.
Other user-defined response types are:
Error - INVALID-PORT. This message means that the local machine or target machines port number was not properly
specified. This means that the TCP port was out of the 1-65535 range.
Error - NO-USER. This message tells the requesting host that the user could not be identified or the port pair is not in use.
Error - HIDDEN-USER. This message tells the requesting host that the port pair user was identified but the user has requested
to remain anonymous.
Error - UNKNOWN-ERROR. The IDENT server cannot determine the ownership of the port connection pair.
To log IDENT requests to the Ident log file, you must check the Enable IDENT Request Logging checkbox. For security reasons,
this box is not checked by default (new in version 4.03).
You may clear the previous entries in the User Name entry area by pressing the button mark 'C' located to the right of the entry
area.
To enable or disable the IDENT server, please check or uncheck the Enable IDENT Server checkbox on the IDENT Server tab
as desired. You may verify that the server is operating by using the command line function 'netstat'. You can also manually test the
IDENT server by using TCP Term to connect to the 'AUTH' port on 'localhost', then type some text and press enter.
See Also...
Finger
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TCP means transmission control protocol as defined in RFC 793. It is intended to provide a highly reliable method of assuring
delivery of packets between network connected computer systems and uses IP as a next level lower protocol layer.
34 Copyright 2001 Northwest Performance Software, Inc.