alateos
asked on
How to find out MAC address of other PCs on the network
I'm trying to find out the MAC address of other PCs on my network without having to physically go to those PCs. Is there a way to do that?
masnrock
Use Ethereal (http://www.ethereal.com), or any other network protocol analyzer. Capture a sampling of packets, and if you know the IP addresses, you can correspond them to the MAC addresses, and thus know which PC has what MAC.
you can ping the ip of the remote machine, and then from a command line do
arp -a
it will list the ip's you've connected to, and the corresponding mac address
arp -a
it will list the ip's you've connected to, and the corresponding mac address
alateos,
I would second wirthr's comment (presuming, of course, that the machine is on the same LAN):
- do a PING <ip address>
- use "arp -a" to display the ARP table (locate the entry associated with the correct IP address).
Installing Ethereal or another sniffer for this small query is more effort than is necessary.
- Bob Gezelter (aka RLGSC)
I would second wirthr's comment (presuming, of course, that the machine is on the same LAN):
- do a PING <ip address>
- use "arp -a" to display the ARP table (locate the entry associated with the correct IP address).
Installing Ethereal or another sniffer for this small query is more effort than is necessary.
- Bob Gezelter (aka RLGSC)
ASKER
Actually I need to know the physical MAC address of the PCs around me
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how many are there? If it's just a few, ping them, and look in the arp table. If there are a bunch, then ethereal would probably be the answer.
ASKER
Is there just a very easy way to see all the ip addresses that are on my local network including their physical MAC addresses?
depending on the switch/router you use, you may be able to pull the info from it ...otherwise the only solution would be something like wirthr recommended->ethereal
How big a network are we speaking? If you have a small number, you could technically take the approach everyone else has mentioned, and write a script to do the heavy lifting for you.
If you want to use the protocol analyzer, you can just set it up and have it capture traffic for a little while. Requires very little work once you set up the software. (This one works better for larger networks as well)
If you want to use the protocol analyzer, you can just set it up and have it capture traffic for a little while. Requires very little work once you set up the software. (This one works better for larger networks as well)
>>Is there just a very easy way to see all the ip addresses that are on my local network including their physical MAC addresses?
Yes. Log into the switch handling your local segment and view the forwarding table. It will have MAC address to port numbers. Then, log into the default gateway for the IP subnet and view the ARP table which will have a table of MAC address and IP addresses.
It's common for a Layer 3 switch to have port, MAC, and IP all on one one ARP table.
A GREAT GUI for doing this is the toolset from Solarwinds
http://www.solarwinds.net/Tools/Engineer/index.htm
You can get a 30 day free eval. Check out Switch Port Mapper.
Yes. Log into the switch handling your local segment and view the forwarding table. It will have MAC address to port numbers. Then, log into the default gateway for the IP subnet and view the ARP table which will have a table of MAC address and IP addresses.
It's common for a Layer 3 switch to have port, MAC, and IP all on one one ARP table.
A GREAT GUI for doing this is the toolset from Solarwinds
http://www.solarwinds.net/Tools/Engineer/index.htm
You can get a 30 day free eval. Check out Switch Port Mapper.