There are various phases involved in performing a network scan using Nmap. These steps can be defined by various options provided by the Nmap utility. A user can pick any of these options, as per their requirements, to obtain specific network scan results. The following are the options provided by the Nmap utility:

• Host discovery
• Scan techniques
• Port specification and scan order
• Service or version detection
• Script scan
• OS detection
• Timing and performance
• Evasion and spoofing
• Output
• Target specification