Please follow these instructions to successfully ping a network MAC access. MAC Address means Media Access Control Address. The MAC address is an identifier for computer network hardware. It is a unique identifier set by the manufacturer and is permanently set into the hardware equipment. This identifier helps network communicate with each other. You can find MAC address on the following devices:

  1. Computers
  2. Smart Phones
  3. Enterprise Servers
  4. Industrial Equipment
  5. Internet Of Things
  6. WIFI

Today's questions is regarding networking. the question is:

"is it possible to ping a device using only the mac address of the machine? or what tools I can use to check if a device is connected to the network"

ANSWER: the answer is no. IP Address is layer 3 of the OSI Model, and the MAC Address belongs to Layer 2

However, there is a way for example, if I have a network printer connected to my LAN but I can't ping it. the printer may be in your network and you probably are just pinging the wrong ip address for that printer. so how do you find the correct ip address? this is what I would do

Go to the printer, usually devices will have the MAC ADDRESS printed on the back, so for example, lets say my printer has this MAC ADDRESS:

01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa

So what I can do is run the arp command. to run the arp utility, open your command terminal. I am using windows 7 for this tutorial, so I will use windows DOS terminal.

ARP COMMAND:

arp -a


It will give you a list of all the devices recorded in your computer:

This is the output on my computer:

C:\Users\MYPC>arp -a

Interface: 192.168.0.2 --- 0xe
  Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
  192.168.0.1           02-00-00-00-00-00     dynamic
  192.168.0.255         ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff     static
  224.0.0.22            01-00-5e-00-00-16     static
  224.0.0.252           01-00-5e-00-00-fc     static
  239.255.255.250       01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa     static
  255.255.255.255       ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff     static

Interface: 192.168.56.1 --- 0x12
  Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
  192.168.56.255        01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa     static
  224.0.0.22            01-00-5e-00-00-16     static
  224.0.0.252           01-00-5e-00-00-fc     static
  239.255.255.250       ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff     static


As you can see from the list, the device with 01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa is IP ADDRESS 192.168.56.1 so I can ping that device now.


MAC Address Quiz

Now that you know what a MAC address is and how you can ping. Are you ready for a quick quiz?