Hardware Address HOWTO

By Eric Brager

A Brief overview of what a hardware address is and why it is important is available. Specific instructions for determining the hardware address of the network card in your computer is availaible for these types of computers:

  1. Windows 95/98/Me
  2. Windows NT/2000
  3. Apple Macintosh/MacOS

1. Windows 95/98/Me

  1. Click on the "Start" button and chose "Run..." from the menu.
  2. Type "winipcfg" in the "Open:" box of the "Run" window.
  3. A window showing tcp/ip configuration of your computer will appear on the screen.
  4. If you receive and error informing you that Windows 95/98/Me cannot find this program please refer to TCP/IP Workstation Configuration to configure your computer for TCP/IP.

2. Windows NT/2000

  1. Click on the "Start" button and chose "Run..." from the menu.
  2. Type "command" in the "Open:" box of the "Run" window.
  3. From the command prompt type the command: ipconfig /all
  4. The hardware address of your computer is the "Physical Address" listed under the description of your network adapter.

3. Macintosh/MacOS

  1. On a Mac running Open Transport, open the TCP/IP Control Panel and click on the "Info" button. The Ethernet address will be entitled "Hardware Address."
  2. On a Mac running MacTCP, open the MacTCP Control Panel, hold down the Option key, and click on the "Ethernet" icon. The Ethernet address will appear below the icon.

Created on Dec 2, 1996 by Eric Brager
Modified on Feb 1, 2002