Finding your Hardware MAC Address

Windows Vista/7
Windows XP/2000/NT
Windows 95/98/Me
Macintosh OS X
Apple iPhone
Macintosh with Open Transport
Macintosh with MacTCP
GNU/Linux
FreeBSD
Hewlett-Packard HP/UX
Solaris/SunOS

Windows Vista/7

While the ipconfig command will work on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the output is substantially longer than in previous versions of Windows, making it much more difficult to find the relevant information. Instead, we reccomend using the getmac command.

First open a Command Prompt window by going to the start menu, entering cmd in the search bar and hitting enter. Enter the command getmac /v /fo list. Find the entry associated with your network card, typically labeled Local Area Connection for wired interfaces or Wireless Network Connection for wireless interfaces. The value listed as the Physical Address is your Hardware MAC Address.

Windows XP/NT/2000

Once you have your Ethernet card and TCP/IP installed, run ipconfig /all from an Command Prompt window (click Start, then Run, then type cmd in the text box to open a Command Prompt window.) Find the section titled Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection (this may be named slightly differently, and will be different for wired Ethernet cards vs. Wireless cards), and look for an entry labelled Physical Address. This is your Hardware MAC Address.

Windows 95/98/Millenium Edition

Once you have your Ethernet card and TCP/IP installed, run winipcfg (click Start, then Run, then type winipcfg in the text box.) Once the program runs, select your Ethernet card from the drop down box. Make sure you do not select PPP Adapter, Dial-Up Adapter, or AOL Adapter--those entries are not for your Ethernet card. After you select your Ethernet card, look for a box marked Adapter Address. This is your Hardware MAC Address.

Macintosh OS X

From the Apple Menu, open System Preferences and select the Network control panel. Select your Ethernet card under Configure:, and select the TCP/IP tab. The Hardware MAC address is listed beside Ethernet Address:.

Apple iPhone

From the main screen, select Settings, General, About. Your MAC address will be identified as Wi-Fi Address in the list of settings.

Macintosh with Open Transport

First, open the TCP/IP control panel. Select info from the main control panel. The Hardware MAC address is displayed as the Hardware Address.

Macintosh with MacTCP

Open the MacTCP control panel. You should see an icon labeled Ethernet. Hold down the Option key and click this icon. A number should appear beneath the icon, this is your Hardware MAC address.

GNU/Linux

On GNU/Linux systems, the Ethernet device is typically called eth0. In order to find the MAC address of the Ethernet device, type /sbin/ifconfig -a and look up the relevant info. For example:

$ /sbin/ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:60:08:C4:99:AA
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:15647904 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
          TX packets:69559 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0x300

The Hardware MAC Address is the HWaddr listed on the first line. In the case of this machine, it is 00:60:08:C4:99:AA. If no Ethernet device shows up when you type the above command, it means your Ethernet card driver is not loaded or your Ethernet card was not recognized by the kernel. The Linux Documentation Project has documentation you can use to help you get your network working.

FreeBSD

On a FreeBSD machine the command dmesg will display the Hardware MAC address, among other things.

Hewlett-Packard HP/UX

On HP/UX systems, the Ethernet device is typically called lan0. Type lanscan and look up the relevant info. For example:

$ lanscan
Hardware Station        Dev Hardware Net-Interface   NM  Encapsulation      Mjr
Path     Address        lu  State    NameUnit State  ID  Methods            Num
2.0.2    0x08000935C99D 0   UP       lan0     UP     4   ETHER              52

Note: HP systems remove the :'s from the MAC address. In the case of this system, the Hardware MAC address is 08:00:09:35:C9:9D.

Solaris/SunOS

On Solaris and SunOS systems, the Ethernet device is typically called le0, ie0, or hme0. In order to find the Hardware MAC address of the Ethernet device, you must first become root, through the use of su. Then, type /sbin/ifconfig -a and look up the relevant info. For example:

# /sbin/ifconfig -a
le0: flags=863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet 131.225.80.209 netmask fffff800 broadcast 131.225.87.255
        ether 8:0:20:10:d2:ae

Note: Solaris and SunOS strip off the leading 0 commonly included in the MAC address. In the case of this machine, the Hardware MAC address is 08:00:20:10:d2:ae

Maintained by webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: Feb 24, 2010, 11:35 EST