Now that you have Command Prompt open, you should see a black box with white text. Open Command Prompt The easiest way to open Command Prompt is by searching Command Prompt in the task.Īfter it pops up in the search result, double-click on the icon to open up Command Prompt. This is the quickest way to find your MAC address, but it can be intimidating if you have never used the Command Prompt before. When MAC addresses were introduced in 1979, those engineers were forward-thinking and made an essentially future-proof system. There are 281 trillion MAC addresses, so even at 10% of use, each person would get 4,000 devices. Note that we said one of that is because big companies like Apple would go through all of their possibilities fairly quickly.įor those curious, it is improbable we will ever run out of MAC addresses. For example, one of Apple’s identifiers is D49A20. The manufacturers assign these addresses, so there is no way to change them.Įach manufacturer of network connection cards gets there own identifier. If devices didn’t have MAC addresses, your router would have no way of telling what device requested data from the Internet. Every device with Wi-Fi access has a MAC address, which tells your router to send the data it requests to that device. Instead, MAC is an acronym for Media Access Control. What is a MAC Address?ĭespite the name, your computer’s MAC address does not have anything to do with Apple. Before we dive into the steps to discover your MAC address, let’s go over the basics first. Your MAC address will be the same wherever your computer is. In this article, we will show you how to find out the MAC address for your Windows computer. If you are not setting up a new router, a MAC address is a nice thing to know for troubleshooting purposes, especially related to networking issues. Maybe you are setting up a new router and want only to allow devices you recognize. There are a couple of reasons to find out your MAC address.

How to check mac address of computer