How would you communicate with a device when you don’t have the IP?

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You might be in a situation where you don’t have the IP address of a device in a local network, but all you have is records of the MAC or hardware address.

Or your computer is unable to display its IP due to various reasons, and you are getting a “No Valid IP Address” error.

Finding the IP from a known MAC address should be the task of a ReverseARP application, the counterpart of ARP.

But RARP is an obsolete protocol with many disadvantages, so it was quickly replaced by other protocols like BOOTP and DHCP, which deal directly with IP addresses.

In this article, we’ll show you how to find IPs and device vendors using MAC addresses with different methods for free.

Understanding ARP

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is the protocol in charge of finding MAC addresses with IPs in local network segments.

It operates with frames on the data link layer.

As you might already know, devices in the data link layer depend on MAC addresses for their communication.

Their frames encapsulate packets that contain IP address information.

A device must know the destination MAC address to communicate locally through media types like Ethernet or Wifi, in layer 2 of the OSI model.

Understanding how ARP works can help you find IPs and MAC addresses quickly.

The following message flow diagram can help you understand the concept:

The local computer sends a ping (ICMP echo request) to a destination IP address (remote computer) within the same segment. Unfortunately, the local computer does not know the MAC address… it only knows the IP address.
The destination hardware address is unknown, so the ICMP echo request is put on hold. The local computer only knows its source/destination IP and its source MAC addresses. ARP uses two types of messages, ARP Request and Reply.

The local computer sends an ARP REQUEST message to find the owner of the IP address in question.

This message is sent to all devices within the same segment or LAN through a broadcast MAC (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF) as the destination.

Because the remote computer is part of the same network segment, it receives the broadcast message sent by the local computer. All other computers in the LAN also receive the broadcast but they know that the destination IP is not theirs, so they discard the packet. Only the remote computer with destination IP, responds to the ARP REQUEST with an ARP REPLY, which contains the target MAC address.
The local computer receives the ARP REPLY with the MAC address. It then resumes the ICMP echo request, and finally, the remote computer responds with an ICMP echo reply.

Finding IPs with ARP

You can use ARP to obtain an IP from a known MAC address.

But first, it is important to update your local ARP table in order to get information from all devices in the network.

Send a ping (ICMP echo reply) to the entire LAN, to get all the MAC entries on the table.

To ping the entire LAN, you can send a broadcast to your network.

Open the Command Prompt in Windows or terminal in macOS and type.

ping 192.168.0.255

My subnet is 192.168.0.0/24 (mask of 255.255.255.0), so the broadcast address is 192.168.0.255 which can be calculated or found with a “Print Route” command in Windows or a “netstat -nr” in macOS. Or can also be obtained with a subnet calculator.

For Windows:

Step 1.

Open the CMD (Command Prompt)
Go to the “Start” menu and select “Run” or press (Windows key + R) to open the Run application
In the “Open” textbox type “cmd” and press “Ok”.

This will open the command-line interface in Windows.

Step 2.

Enter the “arp” command.
The arp command without any additional arguments will give you a list of options that you can use.

Step 3.

Use the arp with additional arguments to find the IP within the same network segment.
With the command “arp -a” you can see the ARP table and its entries recently populated by your computer with the broadcast ping.

Step 4.

Reading the output.
The information displayed in the arp-a is basically the ARP table on your computer.
It shows a list with IP addresses, their corresponding physical address (or MAC), and the type of allocation (dynamic or static).

Let’s say you have the MAC address 60-30-d4-76-b8-c8 (which is a macOS device) and you want to know the IP.

From the results shown above, you can map the MAC address to the IP address in the same line.

The IP Address is 192.168.0.102 (which is in the same network segment) belongs to 60-30-d4-76-b8-c8.

You can forget about those 224.0.0.x and 239.0.0.x addresses, as they are multicast IPs.

For macOS:

Step 1:

Open the Terminal App. go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal or Launchpad > Other > Terminal.

Step 2:

Enter the “arp” command with an “-a” flag.
Once you enter the command “arp -a” you’ll receive a list with all ARP entries to the ARP Table in your computer.
The output will show a line with the IP address followed by the MAC address, the interface, and the allocation type (dynamic/static).

Finding IPs with the DHCP Server

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is the network protocol used by TCP/IP to dynamically allocate IP addresses and other characteristics to devices in a network.

The DHCP works with a client/server mode.

The DHCP server is the device in charge of assigning IP addresses in a network, and the client is usually your computer.

For home networks or LANs, the DHCP Server is typically a router or gateway.

If you have access to the DHCP Server, you can view all relationships with IPs, MACs, interfaces, name of the device, and lease time in your LAN.

Step 1.

Log into the DHCP Server. In this example, the DHCP server is the home gateway.
If you don’t know the IP address of your DHCP Server/ Gateway, you can run an ipconfig (in Windows) or ifconfig (in macOS/Linux).
This particular DHCP Server/Gateway has a web interface.

Step 2.

Enter the IP address on the search bar of the web browser, and input the right credentials.

Step 3.

Find the DHCP Clients List.
In this TP-Link router, the DHCP Server functionality comes as an additional feature.
Go to DHCP > DHCP Clients List. From this list, you can see the mapping between MAC addresses and their assigned IPs.

Using Sniffers

Scan Local Network For Devices

If you couldn’t find the IP in the ARP list or unfortunately don’t have access to the DHCP Server, as a last resort, you can use a sniffer.

Packet sniffers or network analyzers like Nmap (or Zenmap which is the GUI version) are designed for network security.

Scan My Network For Devices Macbook Pro

They can help identify attacks and vulnerabilities in the network.

With Nmap, you can actively scan your entire network and find IPs, ports, protocols, MACs, etc.

If you are trying to find the IP from a known MAC with a sniffer like Nmap, look for the MAC address within the scan results.

How to find the Device and IP with a Sniffer?

Step 1.

Keep records of your network IP address information.
In this case, my network IP is 192.168.0.0/24. If you don’t know it, a quick “ipconfig” in Windows cmd or an “ifconfig” in macOS or Linux terminal can show you the local IP and mask.
If you can’t subnet, go online to a subnet calculator and find your network IP.

Step 2.

Download and open Nmap.
Download Nmap from this official link https://nmap.org/download.html and follow its straightforward installation process.

Step 3.

Open Nmap (or Zenmap) and use the command “sudo nmap -sn (network IP)” to scan the entire network (withou