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I am using Mac OS X Lion. How can I learn the MAC address of a wireless router that is listed in the wireless network list?

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3 Answers

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Option-click on the Wi-Fi icon. Once the menu appears, press Option again. Now when you hover over any network a tooltip with the MAC address (BSSID) will appear after a short delay.

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That's not the right procedure. The correct method is to hold the OPTION key and then right click on the WiFi icon. It'll then show details of the current network you are connected to (but not the others). To find information about the other networks, you would click the OPTION key again and then, like you say, hover over them, which will prompt a tooltip with the information (you need only click OPTION again one time to prompts). An Option-click (or Alt-click) signifies a click of the right mouse button. Can you please fix your terminology? It is a little ambiguous and may confuse some users. – cksum Oct 2 '11 at 1:13
Only Ctrl-click is a direct equivalent of right-click. I definitely do not have to right-click the icon while holding down the option key for this to work. But yes, once Option is pressed again the tooltip occurs for every network, I'll this in a minute. – root Oct 2 '11 at 9:19
Sorry, that should be left click, not alt-click (right click); just a normal click... sigh. – cksum Oct 2 '11 at 9:58
up vote 1 down vote

I'd recommend this free tool to discover the MAC address

http://www.istumbler.net/

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up vote 1 down vote

Another way out is you can get the MAC address associated with an IP address. In your case, you need to find your router's IP address. Normally, it's your Default Gateway. You can do all of these using the command lines.

First, you need to get your Default Gateway. Type netstat -nr | grep default. The output should show something like this:

default            192.168.1.1        UGSc           31        0     en1

From that, you could pretty sure that your router's IP address is 192.168.1.1. Then, you must find the MAC address associated to this IP by using arp -a | grep 192.168.1.1 command. The output will show you the router's MAC address.

? (192.168.1.1) at 0:c:42:64:bd:10 on en1 ifscope ...

Hope that help :)

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