Modern computer technologies tirelessly surprise the older generation, because they were an incredible step and literally a push of human evolution to absorb more knowledge. But not everything is useful, therefore, the authorities of many countries are trying to ban this or that information, media resource, website, etc. But how to do this? Thanks to the identification number, they check the person, but few people know that this is how you can find a computer on the network. But first you need to find out the MAC address. This article is recommended for novice users of the Windows operating system, because it will provide some interesting and useful facts for this group of Internet users.
What is a MAC address?
We all know that computers gained such great popularity around the collapse of the Soviet Union, but not everyone knows why. The reason is very, very banal. The Internet was originally developed by the US military - everything for fast and high-quality communication between computers in different parts of such a large country. At that time was the height of the so-called Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States were on the verge of a very real nuclear confrontation, but nothing happened.
However, after some time, the US government has declassified its achievements in creating a closed communications network. The news very quickly dispersed in different directions, the World Wide Web began to cover humanity, but the problem arose of how to identify each computer, because if there are two identical users on the network, then the entire network will collapse.
It was decided to create certain network protocols that include rules on the network that a computer must adhere to in order to send a request, and then receive a response safely. And so the famous MAC address was created. To be brief, this is a unique number of hardware for the computer, that is, the network card through which it is connected to the Internet.
In the next paragraph of the article, we will describe in detail how to find out the MAC address on your computer thanks to the capabilities of the Windows operating system. The following paragraph is recommended for beginning developers of network applications.
How to find out the MAC address of Windows 7?
First, you need the presence of any network card in your computer, for example, a WiFi adapter - there is not much difference in this. If you have an Internet connection, then this will only simplify the process.
Instructions on how to find the MAC address by IP:
- Activate the Windows command line, this can be done using the cmd.exe command.
- Now you need to enter the ping keyword and the IP address of the computer whose MAC you want to find out. You can also enter your own.
- Now enter the command arp - a, press Enter.
- You will be shown the IP addresses, and on the contrary, the MAC address. So you can get information about the network card of the computer, because the first two characters speak of the manufacturer. Detailed manufacturers table is publicly available
Warning
If you are trying to find out the MAC address of a company, we strongly discourage you from doing this for the following reasons:
- Large companies have fairly solid system administrators, so they will figure you out very quickly if you try to take illegal actions.
- If advanced scammers have already visited the company’s subnet, and you went after them, then there is a very high probability that all the blame for the deed will fall on you.
The MAC address search procedure is best done on your computers, or if you are a system administrator.
Finally
We hope that after reading this article you understand how you can find out the MAC address on your own computer, using only the console. If you want to find out your own IP for searching, we recommend using specialized services, for example 2IP - they will immediately show you a dynamic or static address.