How to Find the Physical Address of a Wireless Adapter on a Computer

In computer networking, every component--wired or wireless--has a physical address, also known as a Media Access Control (or MAC) address. Because the physical address of a network adapter is complex, it is rare for any two adapters to share the same address. For this reason, many wireless routers use a system of MAC address filtering. Only the wireless adapters whose physical addresses have been configured in the wireless router are allowed access. Find the physical address of your wireless adapter if you are configuring MAC address filtering in your wireless router.

Instructions

1. Press the Windows logo and "R" keys simultaneously to bring up the "Run" dialog box. Type "cmd" without quotation marks into the box and press "Enter." This causes the Windows command prompt to open.

2. Type "ipconfig /all" without quotation marks in the command prompt and press "Enter."

3. Scroll down the list until you locate an item with the title "Wireless Network Connection" (or similar). The physical address of the wireless adapter is shown below the "Description" line. The address is six pairs of letters and numbers, such as "00-25-D3-5A-BD-D7."

References

• Indiana University Knowledge Base: What is the IPv4 MAC address of my network adapter?