The ifconfig command is another effective approach to identifying the MAC address of your Linux machine.

Find Linux System Mac Address Using Ifconfig Command In the above screen capture, three distinct MAC addresses can be identified from the ip address command.Īnother useful command is the ip link which only focuses on the MAC address and does not display the IP addresses. $ ip addrĭepending on the network adapter or interface present, we can see the availed MAC addresses. The ip command is part of the iproute2 package and can be used to display both the MAC address and IP address of your Linux-powered machine using either of the following commands. Find Linux System Mac Address Using IP Command 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. The term MAC Address is a derived abbreviation for Media Access Control Address.

Find mac on linux