MAC Address is used to identify a Network Interface Card uniquely in a layer 2 network. This address is used to transfer files between default gateway and host or computer. In this tutorial, we will learn how to find a MAC address from command-line or GUI in operating systems like Windows and Linux.
Display Mac Address with Windows ipconfig Command Line
ipconfig command provides a lot of information about the network of the current system. We will provide /all option in order to list detailed information like MAC address. All interfaces will be listed with their MAC addresses.
> ipconfig /all
MAC address is listen on the Physical Address line and has value 00-0C-29-01-C1-26 which is a VMware interface.
Display Mac Address with Windows Network Connections GUI
Windows also provides the option to list MAC address with GUI. Use Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Network Connections . Then click the network interface you want to learn.
And then click Details button which will list MAC address of this network adaptor.
We will get following window where Physical Address is the MAC address of the network interface.
Display Mac Address with Linux ip link Command
Linux provides ip command set in order to manage network interfaces and network-related issues. We can use ip with link option which will list currently available interfaces with the MAC addresses.
$ ip link
As we can see on the second line of the network interface information the MAC address is listed.
Display Mac Address Linux ifconfig Command
ifconfig is the old friend of the Linux system administrator. We can use ifconfig command in order to list detailed information about the network interface like MAC address. We will also provide the network interface name which is ens33 in this case.
$ ifconfig ens33