How to find MAC Address of Access Point my PC is connected to

Rashmi Bhardwaj | Blog,BUZZ,Config & Troubleshoot,Wireless
Advertisements

In this post we will discuss on a handy command on Windows PC to find out MAC address of Access Point the user is connected to. This is going to be pretty simple.

Start with command prompt and issue below command –

C:\Users\ipwithease>netsh wlan show interfaces

Advertisements

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name                                               : WiFi

Description                                     : Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260

GUID                                               : d6f6ce28-e078-4890-aafa-40edeaff8c85

Physical address                            : 5c:c5:d4:04:b2:71

State                                                 : connected

SSID                                                 : IPWITHEASE

BSSID                                              : c4:12:f5:40:a5:04

Network type                                  : Infrastructure

Radio type                                       : 802.11ac

Authentication                               : WPA2-Personal

Cipher                                               : CCMP

Connection mode                           : Auto Connect

Channel                                            : 149

Receive rate (Mbps)                       : 433.3

Transmit rate (Mbps)                    : 433.3

Signal                                                : 95%

Profile                                               : IPWITHEASE

Hosted network status                  : Not available

As shown above, the MAC address of Access Point is under BSSID i.e. “c4:12:f5:40:a5:04

Infact on further drilling down on my home Wireless System where Internet Router is also provising the functionality of Access Point , lets see if The default Gateway and Access Point MAC address is same –

Once again, under command prompt following command is issued –

Step 1 –

Find out IP address of Default Gateway (which is working both as Internet Router and Access Point)

C:\Users\608885580>ipconfig

Wireless LAN adapter WiFi:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : dlink.router

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.104

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

Step 2 –

View the Mac Address of IP

C:\Users\ipwithease>arp –a 192.168.0.1

Interface: 192.168.0.104 — 0x4

Internet Address               Physical Address                   Type

192.168.0.1                         c4-12-f5-40-a5-04             dynamic

 

From the out , we see the MAC address of Internet Router (arp –a 192.168.0.1) and Access Point (netsh wlan show interfaces) are the same ie c4-12-f5-40-a5-04.

However scenario will be different when Access Point and Default Gateway are physical different devices ie BSSID and ARP out entry of Default Gateway will show different MAC addresses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Advertisements

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Shopping Cart
Select your currency
USD United States (US) dollar
Scroll to Top