Need Cable Modem MAC Address
Gerry Doris
but that only gives me the mac's for my nic's. The damn modem only has its
serial number on it.
Is there some command that I can use to get the mac???
Steve Cowles
"Gerry Doris" <gdo...@home.com> wrote in message
news:RISt4.46226$632.1...@news1.rdc2.on.home.com...
It's a modem (not a router). Simply put... Think of an 8 port hub. Each port
of the hub does NOT have an individule MAC address. All a cable modem is
doing is extending one of those 8 ports to your house. e.g. Extending a LAN.
I have an ADSL modem (not a router). When I do an "arp -a" I see the MAC
address of the next hop router, not the modem itself.
FWIW: To fully understand, read up on the Network OSI model and the 7 layers
that constitute a network. e.g. physical, link, protocol... all the way up
to application. Then I think you'll understand what "layer" your cable modem
is running at and why you don't see the MAC address.
Steve Cowles
Gerry Doris
It was my understanding that ISP's could configure their cable modems across
their networks. If they don't have addresses then how do they do this???
Perhaps they were putting me on but one time I was having problems and the
customer service rep asked me to confirm my cable modem serial number so
that he could download a new configuration. I gave it to him and in a short
time the cable led started blinking. The rep claimed he was reloading the
config to the modem.
Gerry
"Steve Cowles" <NoS...@NoSpam.net> wrote in message
news:WkUt4.160$Lz5....@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net...
Malware
you wrote:
> Hmmm, what you say makes sense but I'm more confused than ever now.
>
> It was my understanding that ISP's could configure their cable modems across
> their networks. If they don't have addresses then how do they do this???
Those modems might have an address on the cable side. It does not have
to be an ethernet MAC because they probably drive another protocol on
the cable than ethernet.
Malware
David C.
>
> I need to find my cable modem's hardware mac address. I've tried
> using arp but that only gives me the mac's for my nic's. The damn
> modem only has its serial number on it.
>
> Is there some command that I can use to get the mac???
If you run tcpdump (a packet sniffer) with the -e option, you'll see the
ether address of all incoming packets.
Note, however, that you will only see information about your modem if
you send packets to it. If it is acting as a bridge instead of a router
(a common configuration), it will not rewrite the layer-2 headers with
its own information.
-- David