global identification Ī MAC address is responsible for local identification and an IP address for global identification. Some of the main differences between a MAC address and an IP address include the following: IP address: What's the difference?īoth MAC addresses and IP addresses are meant to identify a network device, but in different ways. You can use this fact by first connecting to a remote computer and read the MAC address afterwards with the arp command.MAC address vs. The MAC address is required if an IPv4 packet has to be encapsulated into an Ethernet frame. The main purpose of the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is to resolve the MAC address for a specific IP address. Here, too, note that the firewall on the remote computer must allow WMI queries. For example, if you only need the MAC addresses of the physical adapters and not those of the numerous virtual adapters, you could run the following query: wmic /node:192.168.23.216 NIC where PhysicalAdapter='true' get description,macaddress The advantage of wmic over other tools is that you can access exactly the information you require. Other useful attributes that you could retrieve with wmic are “manufacturer” or “productname.” This query extracts the description and the MAC address from the extensive information that WMI provides about the adapter. It also supports reading the MAC address through the alias NIC: wmic /node:192.168.23.214 NIC get description,macaddress Wmic is a pretty spartan client for WMI queries. Netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group='windows management instrumentation (wmi)' new enable=yes. If you receive the error message “Access denied,” you can configure the firewall with the following command: Remote access to the PC will only work if its firewall is configured to allow inbound WMI queries. You could redirect the output to a file and then store it in an environment variable with the setx command. In this example, the MAC address of the PC with the IP 192.168.23.214 is displayed in CSV format (parameter /fo csv) and in verbose mode (/v). It is easy to use, supports remote queries, and can display results in a structured format: getmac /s 192.168.23.214 /fo csv /v The built-in Windows tool getmac is the perfect choice for this purpose. Using ipconfig is cumbersome and is not an option if you have to read the MAC addresses remotely. The second call finds all remaining lines with the IDs. The first call of findstr removes all lines with empty MAC addresses. To shorten the search results, you should use a filter: ipconfig /all|findstr /V 00-00-00|findstr Physical This is particularly true if your machine contains multiple (virtual) adapters. To display the MAC address, you have to use the parameter /all, which spits out a clutter of information. In most blogs and forums, ipconfig is recommended for reading the MAC address. Ipconfig: often recommended but unsuitable

How to get ip from mac address