A MAC address is a 12-character hexadecimal number (e.g., D8-BB-C1-A0-FC-23) assigned to Network Interface Controllers (NICs). It’s also called a physical address or hardware address.
Every NIC has a unique MAC address, which means it can be used to identify devices on a network. You can also use this ID for other tasks like limiting the bandwidth for certain devices, orrestricting network access entirely.
I’ll cover various ways to find the MAC Address of your PC in this article. If your current setup doesn’t allow for certain methods, you can go with different ones. I’ll also explain how you can get the MAC addresses of other devices on the network.
Check the Sticker
The MAC address is usually physically printed on the hardware. This applies to PCI network cards, USB wireless adapters, as well as other devices like routers, printers, etc.
Thus, the most obvious way to find a device’s MAC address is to physically check the device.
Through Windows Settings
Opening up the PC case to get a close look at the NIC isn’t exactly convenient, particularly with laptops.USB network adapterswon’t always have the MAC address physically printed either. In such cases, you can easily check the MAC Address via Windows Settings.
Through Control Panel
You can use the Network Connections control panel applet if you want to find the MAC address of other network adapters.
Through Command Prompt
You can use the command prompt to find the MAC address of devices through several commands.
Getmac
Thegetmaccommand is the easiest way to get MAC addresses from the command line. Use it with the verbose option as shown below:
IPConfig
Theipconfigutility lets you interact with various network configurations in Windows. It’s most commonly used tocheck the device’s IP address. When it’s used with the/allparameter, it’ll display the full TCP/IP configuration for adapters, which includes the MAC address.
Get-NetAdapter
As the name implies,Get-NetAdapteris a PowerShell cmdlet that lists network adapters along with some basic properties. To use it,
Netsh
Netshis a versatile scripting utility that’s used for modifying network configurations. One of the simpler uses ofnetshis to list the network interfaces and their various properties.
WMIC
WMICis the CLI version of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) which is commonly used for system administration.WMICcan be used to retrieve different types of info, including the MAC address of NICs. The traditional way to do this is from the command prompt.
WMICis deprecated as of Windows version 21H1 and is superseded by Windows PowerShell for WMI. In case the earlier command stops working in the future, you canuse the PowerShell versionsinstead.
You can also use Common Information Module (CIM) cmdlets instead of WMI cmdlets to access WMI. This is often a better alternative as CIM cmdlets can work on non-Windows machines as well.
Get-CimInstance -ClassName CIM_NetworkAdapter | Format-Table -Property DeviceID,Name,MACAddress,Manufacturer
How to Find Devices MAC Addresses on Your Network?
The ARP cache contains tables that store IP addresses and their mapped MAC addresses. Checking the ARP cache tables witharp -ais the easiest way to find the hardware addresses of other devices on the network.
If this doesn’t work initially, you canmanually ping the device, then check the ARP cache again.
An alternative method is to find MAC addresses by checking the router’s clients list. Here’s how you can do this:
