Note: The AB Freeman School of Business supports computers using the following operating systems: Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home.

What is my hardware address?
How do I find my hardware address? How do I choose the correct card interface?
How do I find my hardware address?
What if I have more than one card listed?

What is my hardware 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; Tulane Information Services needs it to register your wireless card on the campus network.

How do I find my hardware address? How do I choose the correct card interface?

Windows NT-XP
If you have a computer running the Windows NT4 Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home operating system, you use the IPCONFIG utility.

Windows 98-98ME
If you have a computer running the Windows 98 or Windows ME operating system, you use the WINIPCFG utility.

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).

Windows NT/2000/XP

  1. Click Start
  2. Click Run
  3. Type CMD (this will open a command prompt window)
  4. At the prompt, type: ipconfig /all
All registered adapters will be displayed. The one you want is similar to “Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection”, and the physical address should be in the format of xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx.

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix freeman.tulane.edu
Description ORiNOCO Wireless LAN PC Card (5 volt)
Physical Address 00-02-2D-09-4B-B3
Dhcp Enabled Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled Yes
IP Address 129.81.234.74
Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway 129.81.234.1
129.81.113.1
DHCP Server 129.81.234.52
DNS Servers 129.81.234.54
129.81.234.51
129.81.16.21
129.81.224.50
Primary WINS Server 129.81.234.52
Lease Obtained Tuesday, July 15, 2003 2:46:43 PM
Lease Expires Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:46:43 PM

Windows 98/ME

  1. Click Start
  2. Click Run
  3. In the text field, type: winipcfg
An IP Configuration window will appear on your desktop. Choose your Ethernet adapter from the drop-down box. Your MAC address is listed to the right of the "Adapter Address" and should be in the format of xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx.

Note: please make sure the correct adapter is selected!

What if I have more than one card listed?

Windows NT-XP
Land (wired) connections are named “Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection #”. Wireless connections are named “Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection”.
Windows 98/ME
The connection type will appear in the drop-down box. The currently selected adapter is the first item of information in the window, and in some configurations there may be more than one available - for example, Ethernet, AOL, and PPP adapters. The wireless Ethernet card name will usually be something like Brand (ex. ORiNOCO) Wireless LAN PC Card.

Last Updated 7/30/03