How do I get the MAC address of my router?
Don't use the obsoleted commands ifconfig
(8), arp
(8) or route
(8). Use the new command that replace them and can do more, ip
(8).
Use ip route list
to see which default
router your machine have. That should be a line wich starts with default
(or 0.0.0.0
) and have the IP address to the router after. If you uses IPv6, just add the -6
switch, ip -6 route list
.
default via 192.168.11.1 dev eth0 proto static
To see the MAC address of the default
routers IP address, use ip neigh
and look up the line with the IP address and MAC address after lladdr
.
192.168.11.1 dev eth0 lladdr 1c:af:f7:XX:XX:XX REACHABLE
I like one-liners:
arping -f -I $(ip route show match 0/0 | awk '{print $5, $3}')
arping
shows the MAC associated with the default gateway IP address from the output of ip route show match 0/0
, parsed by awk
.
If you don't know the IP of your router, it's most likely your gateway which you can get from the route
command:
$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
Note the line with the flags UG
. The address in the Gateway
column of that line is what you're looking for. Then follow 2707974's suggestion with arp -n
(ping the IP if it doesn't show up at first), and find the matching line:
$ arp -n
Address HWtype HWaddress Flags Mask Iface
192.168.0.1 ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 C eth0
192.168.0.2 ether 66:77:88:99:aa:bb C eth0
Here, your router's MAC would be 00:11:22:33:44:55
.