TechTips - Get Remote PC's MAC Address Using Command Line

Often times as a system admin or just as a casual user you might need to find information about a system or peripheral on your network. One small piece of info that can come in handy is the MAC (Media Access Control) address of a computer or peripheral. This MAC address is a unique identifier to each and every PC or networked device (like a printer) on a network primarily assigned to a NIC (Network Interface Card) by the manufacturer. Having this tiny identifier can help you to identify a specific PC, printer, or device on your network, another bit of handy information.

So the question is how do you go about finding a computer's MAC address?

Well in Windows it is relatively easy, you can logon to the PC and find it using the IPCONFIG /ALL command at the command line, this will return the MAC address for each NIC card. You can then go do this for every single computer on your network (assuming you either very few computers on your network or a lot of time on your hands) and get all the MAC addresses in this manner.

You also could use a simple command at the command line and get all of the MAC addresses on your network; this will save you time and energy. On a home network if you have a router, often times you can simply use the tools within the interface of the router to get the MAC address of all devices and computers on your network, but if you don't know how to do that or just want to do this method for fun here are the simple steps.

Click Start

Type CMD in the Start Search Bar (Vista and Windows 7)

Hit Enter

Type in Arp -a at the prompt

Hit enter

You should get a print out something like this:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]

Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\test>arp -a

Internet Address Physical Address Type

192.168.5.10 00-d0-2b-da-9a-c0 dynamic

192.168.5.11 00-00-0c-07-ac-01 dynamic

192.168.5.12 00-0f-35-22-17-00 dynamic

C:\Users\test>

Also check out the screenshot for an example of what you should see.

Now I know the IP and MAC address tied to each IP. If you want to see the computer name tied to the IP simply run the command PING -A xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (the xxx's represent the IP address for the device or computer) from the same command line you just ran your ARP -a command from.

Well there you have it a very simple way to get all of the MAC addresses of the computers and peripherals on your network.