The ping Command

Is it possible to ping the MAC address?

ping is an echo utility available in many of today's computers. Ping is a terminal command utility available in various operating systems like Windows, Linux and OSX. It is a very useful utility tool for network administrators to identify layer three connectivity between network devices.

As mentioned, ping is a layer 3 utility to echo network packets. If you are interested in pinging a MAC address for a specific device, this is not possible. However, you have other options at identifying a device in your network by the MAC address. A MAC address is also known as the "physical Address"

The arp utility is also available on today's most popular operating systems arp stands for Address Resolution Protocol. The utility saves MAC addresses in a table that contains the IP address and their assigned MAC address.

To use the arp utility and display all your cached physical address in your computer you can send the following command by opening a terminal:

The arp Command

arp -a

The following an the output display for the above command:

C:\Users\Webune>arp -a

Interface: 192.168.1.75 --- 0x5
  Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
  192.168.1.80          4c-80-93-33-97-ad     dynamic
  192.168.1.254         e0-22-03-d5-f5-fd     dynamic
  224.0.0.22            01-00-5e-00-00-16     static
  224.0.0.251           01-00-5e-00-00-fb     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: 192.168.10.1 --- 0xd
  Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
  224.0.0.22            01-00-5e-00-00-16     static
  224.0.0.251           01-00-5e-00-00-fb     static
  224.0.0.252           01-00-5e-00-00-fc     static
  239.255.255.250       01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa     static

Interface: 192.168.56.1 --- 0x10
  Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
  224.0.0.22            01-00-5e-00-00-16     static
  224.0.0.251           01-00-5e-00-00-fb     static
  224.0.0.252           01-00-5e-00-00-fc     static
  239.255.255.250       01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa     static

As you can see from the above command, the table shows the IP Address for each particular MAC address. Find the MAC address and obtained the assigned IP address. Now you can ping the IP address for a particular MAC Address.