Get device details from MAC Address

9
votes

I have used the SendArp API function to retrieve the MAC addresses that are present on my network.

Now that I have a MAC address, I would like to retrieve further information about this device (name, type, manufacturer name, etc.), but I don't know which API is (most) suited for this.

Can anybody help?

1
windowsnetworkingvb6mac-address
the mac address isn't of much use itself. but you can use the mac to look up the box's IP via ARP, then use the ip and standard tcp stuff to access the box. Or do you mean you want to look up info about the ethernet adapter itself? e.g. intel/broadcom, model XYZ, etc...? – Marc B
WMI (Windows Management Interface) is one resource for this. It's a service running on the OS. If you google it, you'll find plenty of code examples for how to use it. – BobRodes

1 Answers

14
votes

The only information you can get from a MAC address is the manufacturer, you can find a list here: http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/oui.txt . Keep in mind that this is the manufacturer of the network interface, it's possible to have a network interface from vendor A inside a device of vendor B.

To get more information you need to connect to the device, probably using the IP address, not the MAC address. You can use WMI for Windows, SSH for Linux and SNMP for printers/switches/PSU's etc.