Introduction
Each network interface card (NIC) has a unique identifier called a MAC address (external link).
This address can often be useful in troubleshooting network connectivity. The following explains how to retrieve the MAC addresses* of your device.
*Note that your device may have more than one NIC (e.g., wired, wireless, and VPN).
Instructions
- Click the start menu button on the taskbar.
- Type CMD into the start menu.
- Hit enter or click Command Prompt.
- Type ipconfig /all and hit enter.
- Scroll down to the NIC you're interested in and note the "Physical Address." This is the MAC address of that NIC. In the example below, you are seeing the information for a NIC used to connect to a "wired" network, and since the laptop is only connected to Wi-Fi, the wired NIC's state is showing as "media disconnected." If it was connected, you would also see an IP address (external link) as well.