How do I figure out what device each client MAC address is in Airport Utility?

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How do I figure out what device each client MAC address is in Airport Utility?

I just noticed today that in iOS 15.3.1, when you go to Settings/General/About, you no longer see the hardware MAC address of the iDevice. It gives you a WiFi hex address, and a Bluetooth hex address. It used to give you the iDevice hardware hex address - if I remember correctly.

in Airport Utility, the device names do not show, only the hardware MAC addresses show. So how do you figure out which address corresponds to what device in the list when you select the AirPort Extreme then select Wireless Clients?

is there some other way in iOS to get the device hardware MAC address?

iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi

Posted on Mar 6, 2022 7:23 AM

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Answer 1

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Bob Timmons

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168,386 points

Mar 6, 2022 7:49 AM in response to pgoodwin

Sounds like you might have powered off and restarted the AirPort router recently. Is that a possibility?

If yes, give it a day or two for the device names to populate and show up under Wireless Clients in AirPort Utility.

If you cannot wait, power off every WiFi device, restart the AirPort router and then power only one WiFi device back up. Whatever shows up as a Wireless Client will also display its Wi-Fi Address aka MAC Address. Keep a note of the info to match up the Wi-Fi Address with the device name.

Power up the next WiFi device and perform the same check, etc. Then, the next device, etc. Keep your list handy to match up the AirPort ID with the device.

As far as I can remember, iOS devices have always displayed a Wi-Fi Address, which is in effect the MAC Address. It is the Wi-Fi Address that is displayed in AirPort Utility under Wireless Clients. To make things confusing, AirPort Utility will at times display the IP Address of the device, the Wi-Fi Address, or the Client ID (device name). Nature of the beast.

On an iPhone or iPad, etc........Settings > General > About > Wi-Fi Address

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Answer 2

pgoodwin Author

Level 2

164 points

Mar 6, 2022 8:16 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Hi Bob. Thanks for responding.

I think you’re correct about iOS never showing the Mac hardware hex address. I just turned on my old iPhone SE running iOS14.4 and it shows the WiFi address - not the hardware address. I must have been remembering wrong. Not sure why Apple wouldn’t put the hardware MAC address in that setting screen.

I did find an old Note that I had saved a long time ago that had some hardware addresses I had downloaded from a Spectrum router years ago - back when you could actually connect to the router and see a client list table with hex addresses and IP addresses. The routers Spectrum gives you - you can’t connect to them directly, you have to use the MySpectrum app or their support website and pull up device info for the router. It doesn’t give the info in a nice table. It just lists the device names and says whether they’re connected or disconnected. You can select each device and it pulls up a list telling IP address, hardware hex address, device name, and whether it’s a wired or wireless connection. Pulling up the info one at a time takes forever. That spectrum app does OK for devices that are connected via Ethernet directly, or via WiFi directly. It does a terrible job though getting device info from the Ethernet connected AirPort Extreme router connected in Bridge mode. All my main floor devices connect wirelessly to the AirPort and it’s wired to the Spectrum router on our lower floor.

Thanks for the one-at-a-time method. I’ll probably have to do that to get some of the info.

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

152,091 points

Mar 6, 2022 9:04 AM in response to pgoodwin

FWIW, to get a good head start, you may want to take a look at the ARP cache on your client's network interface to get an association between MAC-to-IP Addresses by using the following command in the Terminal: /usr/sbin/arp -an

The IP routing process for an outbound IP datagram, leaving your Mac, results in the choice of an interface (Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapter) and a forwarding IP address. ARP compares the forwarding IP address for every outbound IP datagram to the ARP cache for the network adapter over which the packet is sent. If there is a matching entry, then the MAC address retrieved from the cache is used. If not, ARP broadcasts an ARP Request frame on the local subnet, requesting that the owner of the IP address in question reply with its MAC address. The point is that the ARP cache is a good starting point to review your local network's MAC-to-IP Address associations for both wireless and wired devices. I believe the AirPort Utility will only show wireless ones.

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How do I figure out what device each client MAC address is in Airport Utility?

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