How to Get MAC Address Using Remote IP Address

Need to determine the Mac address of a computer on the network? Whether you are using Windows, macOS or Linux, you can easily find the MAC address of any server on your local network with a few simple commands. This wikiHow teaches you how to use commands like arp and getmac to determine the MAC address of a specific IP or hostname, and how to use the nmap command to view all MAC addresses in a network.

Table of Contents

Using the command arp

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Open a Command Prompt or Terminal window. You can use the arp command on any operating system to determine the MAC address of another computer on the network.

On Windows, type cmd in the Windows Search search bar, right-click Command prompt and select Run as administrator .
If using macOS, you need to type Terminal in the Spotlight search bar and then double-click Terminal .
On Linux, press Ctrl + Alt + T or open a Terminal window from the window manager.

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Execute the command ping ipaddress to communicate with the IP address. You need to communicate with the remote computer in order for that computer’s MAC address to be cached—ping is an easy way to do this.

If you know the hostname of that computer but don’t have an IP address, simply ping the hostname—the IP address will be returned for you to use in the next step.

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Execute the command arp -a ipaddress to get the MAC address. The MAC address will appear under the “Physical Address” heading in arp results on Windows and “HWaddress” on macOS and Linux.

Using the getmac command (Windows)

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Open command prompt. If you can log in to the remote computer with administrator access (and that computer is also running Windows), you can use the getmac command to see all the MAC addresses on this device. ^{[1] X Research Source} Type cmd in the Windows Search search bar, right-click Command prompt and select Run as administrator .

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Execute getmac command. The full command would be {{kbd|getmac /s ipaddress /u username /p password .

Replace ipaddress with the remote computer’s IP address or hostname.
Replace username and password with the remote computer’s administrator username and password.

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Find all MAC addresses in the “Physical Address” column. Each MAC address will appear next to the description of the interface type. If the interface is down, the status “Media disconnected” will be displayed next to that MAC address.

Scan with Nmap

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Install Nmap on PC or Mac. You can use Nmap for Linux, Windows, or macOS to scan your local network and display the MAC and IP addresses of all connected computers. ^{[2] X Research Resources} Download and install Nmap at https://nmap.org/download.html.

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Open a Command Prompt or Terminal window.

On Windows, type cmd in the Windows Search search bar, right-click Command prompt and select Run as administrator .
If using macOS, you need to type Terminal in the Spotlight search bar and then double-click Terminal .
On Linux, press Ctrl + Alt + T or open a Terminal window from the window manager.

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Find your local IP address. To proceed, you need to know the subnet to scan.

Windows: Execute the ipconfig command.
macOS: Open System Preferences > Network > Advanced > TCP/IP .
Linux: Run the command ifconfig or ip a .

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Execute the nmap command. The full command would be nmap -sn xxx.xxx.xxx.* . Remember to replace xxx.xxx.xxx.* with the network you want to scan. After a few moments, a list of all IP addresses in the network along with their respective MAC addresses will appear.

For example, with IP address 10.0.0.3 and you want to scan all hosts in the subnet, use the command nmap -sn 10.0.0.* .

Advice

You can only find the MAC address of the computer that is in the same subnet of the computer you are using. We cannot determine the MAC address of a computer if we cannot log into that computer remotely.
If the computer you are trying to reach is protected by a firewall, it is likely that the MAC address will not be visible.

Steps

Using the command arp

Using the getmac command (Windows)

Scan with Nmap

Advice

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