Port Scanner?

[Enigma2003]

i have a network at the moment and i wish to use a port scanner on a specified range of I.P.s to look @ the ports open on them. When i find an open port, i would like to try to connect to it, to see if having ther port open is a vulnerability.

What is the best port scanner?
How can i / what can i use to connect through the port?

[4play]

http://www.insecure.org/nmap/nmap_download.html nmap is by far the best port scanner i have come across but it will only tell you if the port is open.

to be able to connect to a open port there has to be a service running behind. find out what ports are open then hit google/bugtraq looking for vunerabilites.

http://www.gfi.com/languard/ languard is also excellent for scanning your own network to find vunerabilites.