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TechKnowSurge Catalog Videos DEMO: Mac Address Vendor Lookup
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DEMO: Mac Address Vendor Lookup

MAC addresses contain an embedded vendor identifier that can be looked up using free online tools to reveal the manufacturer of any network interface card. This demonstration shows how to retrieve MAC addresses from a Windows machine and trace them back to their hardware vendors.

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About this video

MAC addresses are 48-bit hardware identifiers assigned to network interface cards, and the first half of each address encodes an Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI) that points directly to the hardware vendor. This vendor prefix is registered with the IEEE and allows anyone to trace a MAC address back to the company that manufactured the network interface. Running ipconfig /all on a Windows system returns the MAC addresses for all active network adapters, making it straightforward to gather this information from any local machine. Looking up a MAC address through a free OUI database reveals not just the vendor name but also the full range of MAC addresses assigned to that organization. A machine with both a wired Ethernet adapter and a wireless card will often show two different vendors in these results, which reflects standard OEM purchasing practices where system manufacturers source individual components from specialized third-party suppliers. Understanding how to read and interpret MAC address data is a foundational networking skill with practical applications in asset identification, network inventory, and basic forensic analysis.

What you'll learn

What's covered

MAC Address Vendor Lookup

Aligned to

CompTIA Network+
1.1 Explain concepts related to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model.
Cisco CCNA
1.13 Describe switching concepts
Cisco CCST Networking
4.5 Explain basic switching concepts
Cisco CCST Cybersecurity
2.2 Explain how network addresses impact network security

Key terms

Media Access Control
MAC
A sublayer of the Data Link layer that controls how devices on a network gain access to a medium and transmit data.
Network Interface Card
NIC
A hardware component that connects a computer to a network.
Organizationally Unique Identifier
OUI
The first three octets of a MAC address assigned to a specific manufacturer or vendor to identify the organization that produced the network interface card.
Media Access Control
MAC
A sublayer of the Data Link layer that controls how devices on a network gain access to a medium and transmit data.

Transcript

Looking Up the Ethernet Adapter

We know the first part of the MAC address is assigned to some sort of company, so let's see what that looks like.

On here, I'm going to type in ipconfig /all, and it's going to pop up with a ton of information about all of the network adapters that I have on this, the network interfaces that I have on here. So let's do the Ethernet one first. Here is the Ethernet one. It's showing the MAC address. I'm going to copy that.

I'm going to pull up a web browser here, and I'm going to type up "look up MAC address vendor". I'll use the first address on here, the first one that's not an advertisement — didn't look like there was any advertisements. So I'm going to paste that MAC address in here and hit enter, and then it gives me some information here.

Well, not a surprise. It says Dell. It's a Dell machine, so it makes sense that that would be the vendor that created this. And it gives me the range that was assigned to it. So the first part of this is the first part of the MAC address of my machine, and then the second part is they're given everything from 000000 to FFFFFF, so the full range within there.

The Wireless Adapter

So there are more than one MAC address on my machine. That's because there's more than one network interface card — it also has a wireless card. So let's take a look at the wireless here. I want this wireless Wi-Fi right here, so I'm going to take this MAC address right here. I'll copy it, and we'll bring back our site here. I'll paste it into there, do a new search, and it comes up with actually a different company.

And that's because a lot of these companies will buy parts, and the wireless connector is one of those that they'll buy from other vendors. So this is a different vendor here, but same thing: they've been assigned some sort of range here that it's showing.

So, just kind of a fun little exercise, something quick and easy that you can do to go look up your machine and see who the manufacturer of the network interface is.

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