

aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ffĪpproaches to Finding MAC Address in Linuxĭepending on the number of network interfaces on your Linux machine like Wi-Fi built-in and Ethernet port, your computer can be associated with more than one MAC Address. Its display includes a colon or hyphen after every two MAC address digits for easy readability.įor instance, a MAC address can be represented in the following manner. The MAC address of any device is represented by a 12-digit hexadecimal number. MAC address identifies the device you are using since it is imprinted on the device hardware whereas IP address identifies the connection status among devices seeking to communicate on an existing/configured network. There is a key difference between MAC address and IP address and therefore we should not confuse the two. The house in this case is the network interface controller ( NIC).

To practically relate to or understand what a MAC address is, think of it as the postal or physical address to a house.

The network interface controller ( NIC) uses the MAC address as its assigned unique identifier within an existing network segment. In fact, it could even lead them to you thanks to geolocation data, although to pinpoint your actual location it would probably be necessary to demand the information from your ISP – with a search warrant.The term MAC Address is a derived abbreviation for Media Access Control Address. It’s an unlikely scenario, but if someone had your IP address it is possible that they could hack you, so be wary about telling it to anyone. You might need to know your IP address when setting up certain types of software, Why would anyone need to know your IP address If someone refers to your IP address they probably mean the external one, but we’ll show how to find out both in this article.

This will always be in IPv4 form (four numbers separated by dots) and will nearly always be .X, with the Xs varying from device to device. A group of offline computers linked on a private network would use internal IP addresses to talk to each other, and your Wi-Fi router will use internal IP addresses to speak to the various devices that connect to it.
