Getting IP Address of Access Point

recently I turned my Router to a wireless access point for my home network. Unfortunately, I forgot to note down the AP's IP Address and Subnet.

How do I reliably get the IP of my AP?

Thank's in advance.

EDIT: OS is Vista XP, but I have xubuntu dual booted.

Ok so the configuration is as follow: PCs => (wireless) Belkin Router (AP) -> (wired, bridged) 2Wire Gateway Modem

I want to be able to get the IP Address of the AP, ie. the Belkin Router

Andreas Wong

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 487

Possible duplicate: http://superuser.com/questions/142851/get-ip-address-of-router

– Hello71 – 2010-06-05T13:36:57.270

In my care, it's a bridged network, in the link you've given, it's a normal PC -> Modem network. So I don't think it's duplicate. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T13:41:54.360

What is the ip address of your computer? If you haven't made any drastic changes, it should default to xx.xx.xx.1 (where xx is the same as your computer's) – Default – 2010-06-05T14:23:07.337

Can't you just plug your computer into the router? Or do you have the Ethernet ports disabled? – Hello71 – 2010-06-06T16:10:58.130

Answers

Since it is simply functioning as a WAP device now, short of reseting the WAP and using the default, it might not be all that easy.

Try going through your ARP cache (arp -a in windows, might be similar in linux) and see if the WAP has an entry. Just try each address on your local subnet that's listed.

Other than that, the WAP should be completely transparent so unless you're already communicating with its IP, its IP probably won't show up in network traffic.

Darth Android

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 35 133

7+1 for using arp -a – ta.speot.is – 2010-06-06T00:18:16.090

Nope, the only one I can see is the gateway modem's IP – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-06T03:47:12.420

@andreas Then if it's not 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1, 192.168.2.1, or *.2 for any of those, I'd just reset it back to factory settings and then reconfigure it. – Darth Android – 2010-06-06T05:08:07.560

1arp -a saved my behind just now, 3 years after the answer :) Thank you! – Chahk – 2013-12-30T17:22:51.297

Unless you get get in in from your arp cache (try doing ping 192.168.0.255 first), the only way I know to find it is port scanning. Using something like nmap to scan your network - a WAP should be listening on port 80, and possibly something like telnet as well. Try nmap 192.168.0.1/24

Dentrasi

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 10 115

to accomplish this on a modern windows OS from the command line

netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid

find the network to which you are interested and connected, note the bssid and then run

arp -a

now find the bssid you discovered above in the new list of physical addresses, your access points internet address is listed on the same line.

user975387

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 21

IPCONFIG /ALL (in a command line in Windows) will tell you under the heading Default Gateway. ifconfig under Linux will tell you, and also on Mac OS X (command line), and in the GUI: Network preferences, select wireless, advanced (right below) and TCP/IP tab, router entry.

Henno

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 639

It tells me the IP address of the modem, but not the Access Point. Perhaps a bit of background will be useful, my configuration is:

PCs => Belkin Router (AP) -> (wired) Gateway Modem

if I do ipconfig /all, it will tell me the Gateway Modem's IP, but not the AP. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T13:01:58.240

The router will give the IP addresses, right, so look for the DHCP server IP. It's also listed if memory serves me. – Henno – 2010-06-05T13:16:04.170

The DNS address is coincidentally the same as gateway address. So no, I don't think it works. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T13:18:41.113

I corrected it to DHCP – Henno – 2010-06-05T13:20:09.553

and conveniently, it's also the same as DNS and gateway. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T13:23:10.350

And a LAN scanner (google to find one)? – Henno – 2010-06-05T13:30:22.567

I used Angry IP Scanner and scanned from 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255, and nil =/. Thank's for attempting to help tho. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T13:40:24.740

I presume the modem's acting as DHCP server, NAT and default gateway? What were your computer's IP settings when you did the scan above? If you have a /24 mask (coming from your DHCP server) then the majority of those addresses scanned wouldn't work anyway. Make sure that your real router thinks that its subnet is 255.255.0.0 (so that your computer knows to use ARP to get the MAC address connected with the IP address, and not to forward to the default gateway). HTH – Andy – 2010-06-05T16:11:57.447

Now that you talked about subnet, I just checked from my gateway page that its subnet is 255.255.255.255 (single node in the subnet), however, my ipconfig reports that the subnet is 255.255.255.0. Can you shed me a light on those numbers please? – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T18:57:14.530

An IP address contains two numbers: the network and host numbers. Where the dividing line is between these two numbers isn't constant over all IP addresses. If someone has a /16 address, that means a 16 bit network number, leaving a 16 bit host number. If a /24 address then a 24 bit network number leaving an 8 bit host number. Why this matters here is that the IP protocol handles the situation of sending a packet to the same subnet differently to a different subnet. You want it to think that every address you test is on the same subnet, so your comp's IP address should have a 255.255.0.0 mask. – Andy – 2010-06-05T19:33:27.907

Ok, changed my subnet to 255.255.0.0 and when I scan the second time around, I can see 192.168.2.254, but I can't seem to go there via my browser =(. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-06T03:47:45.443

What's the browser's error screen? – Andy – 2010-06-06T10:53:26.853

Chrome says it can't connect to the specified host. I am able to ping, but not from browser, I guess the host is really up, just that somehow the 80 port is not accessible. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-06T13:19:01.530

Dunno if it could help, but try changing your subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and IP address range 192.168.2.x. – Andy – 2010-06-06T13:23:11.407

And try a telnet 192.168.2.254 80 and see what happens. – Andy – 2010-06-06T13:27:02.343

My vista installation interestingly doesn't have telnet installed... I'll dual boot to xubuntu and try later tonight. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-07T03:12:47.323

Madness! Would be interested to know what happens under xubuntu. (You could also use PuTTY under Win.) – Andy – 2010-06-08T10:33:03.053

Default IP is 192.168.2.1 for a Belkin router, but can't you do a tracert to, say google.com and then find out which one is your router? (It should usually be the first hop.)

Or you could look in your browser's history...

Hello71

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 7 636

The first hop is the Gateway, not the AP unfortunately :( – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T13:42:23.627

+1 for tracert. @Andreas: If your network traffic passes the AP you should still be able to find out the ipaddress of it with tracert. In the tracertstats, is there any other ip-addresses that are on the same subnet as your computer's? – Default – 2010-06-05T14:19:59.713

Nope, sadly it goes straight to the Gateway – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T14:43:31.293

a WAP doesn't work at the network layer so you won't see an IP hop. – Andy – 2010-06-05T16:15:49.763

That's an interesting point, do you have a more elaborate explanation/article on that? – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-07T03:23:50.407

Basically it's a question of how routing works and what a WAP's role is. The WAP effectively extends an existing network; it doesn't enable inter-network comms. A router is used/required to access IP addresses on a different network. – Andy – 2010-06-08T13:01:01.470

If it just passes through anyways, then why won't it just pass through all IPs (including the one you assigned)? – Hello71 – 2010-07-04T19:57:08.773

@Hello71 I'm sorry, I don't follow the Q? – Andy – 2010-07-07T08:50:48.190

I had the same problem. From my Windows 7 PC, i could do a ping on the local subnet by typing

ping 192.168.X.255 -- where X is your local subnet. This should send a broadcast to ALL ips in the subnet. Of course, the ping command will fail.

Next type arp -a This should now list ALL the ping responses received on the subnet. Note that if there are systems on the subnet which have ECHO RESPONSE turned OFF, they wont show up in the list.

One of the these IPs listed will be your AP's IP. If not sure, lookup on the MAC and find out who the vendor is... (http://www.macvendorlookup.com/)

HTH

-A's B

Bala

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 11

You do not need to reset the Belkin router, can you follow below steps:-

Connect to the Belkin AP using LAN cable
Change your machine IP address to 192.168.2.50, subnet 255.255.255.0, leave blank for gateway and dns
From your browser, go to 192.168.2.254 then you will go to the Belkin setup page

Ricky Kong

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 1

This will only work if the Belkin router is 192.168.2.254. The OP has said he doesn't know the IP at all. – Burgi – 2016-05-08T15:04:19.633

If you are using Linux, check the interface you are using with:

$ ifconfig

Then (if connected by WLAN):

$ iwconfig wlp2s0

Extract the MAC address of the access point from the response, and use nmap to check the devices in your network:

$ sudo nmap -sn 192.168.0.1/24

Find the MAC address in the list and its reference to the IP address.

Segaroma

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 1

It is very difficult to determine an address of a transparent device, e.g. switch or WAP, because the device may have an address in a different network and would never respond to ARP on your network. – Ron Maupin – 2016-12-10T05:48:42.367

You can use nmap to scan IPs near you own IP.
or use ping:http://www.linuxscrew.com/2007/09/17/ping-range-of-ip-addresses-in-parallel-with-fping/
there are lots of tools doing this in linux.
you can even use aircrack-ng(but this one needs some time to work).
EDIT:
I think transparent routers(I think your router is) don't have IPs.

behrooz

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 493

1There's no such thing as a "transparent" router. – MDMarra – 2010-06-05T17:29:19.040

you should be able to see this from the 2wire web interface. I'm assuming that it is a router which is the gateway address from ipconfig. Most likely would be in the logs. If the belkin was set to dhcp it should be in the dhcp log. the other option would be to use a ping utility to ping every address in the ip range and see which ones respond. if your ip address is 192.168.1.2 say you would ping every address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254.

user4892

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 196

I've done that, and I still can't find the AP IP Address. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T18:51:24.293

can you plug in an ethernet cable into the belkin router and see if you can get an ip address from that router? if you do it will probably have a gateway address which would be the ip address of the belkin router. if all else fails reset the router. Usually if you hold in the reset button for about 30 seconds or so it resets the router to the factory default at which point you can reconfigure it. – user4892 – 2010-06-06T03:52:54.013

Nope, the DHCP, DNS and Gateway again are pointing to my Gateway Modem even on ethernet. I think I will start considering reseting the router . – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-06T03:56:33.817

In the command prompt you can do arp -a This will show you the MAC address and IP of everything connected to the same broadcast domain that you are. Given your setup, this should show you everything on your network. You can figure out the IP by finding out the MAC address of your AP. Usually this is printed right on the device itself somewhere.

MDMarra

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 19 580

Use this command ( This gives details about all active ips starting with 192.168.1. & their mac & brand ):

sudo arp-scan 192.168.1.0/24

Above command can be read as below

This will give the list of active ips. You can replace 192.168.1.0 with whatever ip u want but the "/24" is a must.

Sorry if there are some mistakes this is my first time writing solutions.

Souce: https://sites.google.com/site/unityindiversity99/

The above website has a lot of solutions for opensource softwares and linux ubuntu

Hope this helps

Vishnu Nithya Soundhar

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 1

1Welcome. That link goes on forever and covers quite a range of stuff. Could you add some kind of identifier to your answer for where in that link to look? Thanks. – fixer1234 – 2014-12-13T05:12:36.300

I had the same issue and didn't know the exact nmap syntax to search for, so I've downloaded https://nmap.org/dist/nmap-6.47-setup.exe for windows, typed my network 192.168.0.1/24 in the address field, hit scan, and then checked the results that show with Discovered open port 80/tcp on ... (webservers).

Niloct

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 121

-1

Reset the router to defaults and reconfigure?

Andy

Posted 2010-06-05T12:40:28.887

Reputation: 2 959

I could do that, but I really want to know if there's a way to do get IP Address of an AP. Thank's for the suggestion though. – Andreas Wong – 2010-06-05T14:43:57.127