What is my hardware (MAC) address?

The hardware address is also called the MAC address or Physical Address of a machine; it is a unique 48-bit address that is encoded directly on the Ethernet interface of the computer. It serves to uniquely identify the physical network interface of the computer, regardless of the IP address it may have at the moment.

The MAC address will be referred to as the Physical Address and is made up of 12 characters e.g. should be in the format of xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx such as 00-D1-AB-F2-G3-89.
Your MAC address is unique to your PC card; and Monash ITS requires it to register your wireless card on the Monash network.

How do I find my hardware address?

It depends on what kind of computer you have.
You also may have more than one Ethernet connection (one wired and one wireless).

• Microsoft XP/Vista

  If you have a computer running the Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home operating system:
  1. Click Start
  2. Click Run
  3. Type CMD (this will open a command prompt window)
  4. At the prompt, type: ipconfig /all and press enter.
  5. Depending on the number and / or types of network adapters fitted to thecomputer,
     the information displayed may be in several sections, referring to the different network adapters present on the machine.
     WIRED: The one you want is similar to “Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection”.
     WIRELESS: The one you want is similar to “Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection”.
     [You may need to scroll back through the text using the drag bar to locate this section.]
     The physical address should be in the format of xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx.



• Macintosh 10.5.x

  Wired (Ethernet)
  
  1. Open System Preferences.
  2. Click Network at the top portion of the window.
  3. Click Ethernet on the left.
  4. Click the Advanced button.
  5. Click the Ethernet tab. Next to Ethernet ID is the MAC address.
  
  Wireless (Airport)
  
  1. Open System Preferences.
  2. Click Network at the top portion of the window.
  3. Click Aiport on the left.
  4. Click the Advanced button.
  5. The AirPort ID is towards the bottom of the window.

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