Finding your MAC address

Discovering your Ethernet Address

[ About ] [ Linux ] [ Windows 10/11 ] [ macOS ]

About the Ethernet or MAC address

As the name Ethernet address implies, your network interface card requires a unique address to talk on an Ethernet network. This address distinguishes you from all other computers on the network and is a 6 byte number (often represented in Hexadecimal, e.g. 0a:b3:2f:9e:3a:20). The Ethernet address is often referred to as the MAC address or Physical address of your network card.

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Finding the MAC address on a Linux system

Start a shell.
At the prompt, type:
/sbin/ifconfig -a
The result is a list of interfaces with their statistics. On Linux machines with a single adapter, you should look for the eth0: entry. The MAC address is the value following the HWaddr or ether field and is in the form of 6 hexadecimal digits separated by a colon (:).

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Finding the MAC address on a computer running the Windows 10/11

Click the Start button and then Run.
In the Run dialog, at Open: type CMD. This starts a new command prompt window.
At the MSDOS prompt, type ipconfig /all | more.
The resulting list is all your network interfaces. Use the space bar to scroll between pages. At the top of the list are some information about your computer, then the remaining items are information about each active network interface.
The MAC address of the adapter is the value headed by the Physical Address field. It will be a number of 6 hexadecimal digits, separated by a hyphen (-), e.g. 0A-B3-2F-9E-3A-20.

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Finding the MAC address on a computer running macOS

Select System Preferences from the Apple menu.
Inside the preferences folder, select the Network icon.
From the Configure combo box, select the Ethernet adaptor you wish to find the address for.
Select the TCP/IP tab.
Look for the field that contains a 6 hexadecimal digits separated by spaces, entitled Ethernet Address. The address will look something like this: 0A B3 2F 9E 3A 20.

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