Finding router's WAN/External MAC address

Question

I want to find my router's WAN MAC address.

• On the WEB UI, WAN MAC is hidden.
• SSH / Telnet is not available (password protected) on router.
• There is no labels/engravings on physical unit which shows the WAN MAC ID.
• I can't disassemble the router, router's "owner" is the ISP, they "lend" the device during subscription.

I want to use another router, but I need "clone" the current MAC to new device.

Can I find the WAN MAC address of the router?

Answer 1

If your router has an Ethernet plug (same as the "network" plug on your computer) on the external interface, with a bit of luck you can get its MAC address from traffic.

• Install Wireshark (a packet analyzer) on your computer
• Note how your computer and the modem are physically networked (you'll want to go back to this state later)
• Start Wireshark and set it to capture in promiscuous mode, on the computer's network interface (most computers only have one, anyway; you are looking for the wired interface, not WiFi)
• Connect the computer to the WAN side of the router
• You should see some traffic on the wire:
• Clicking at the packets in the upper pane, a detailed view of the packet will open in the middle pane. There, you should see MAC addresses of your computer and of the router's WAN port (see image). If the MAC address is ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff, ignore that and look at some other packet (as that's a "broadcast address", which is not useful for us here)
• You should only be seeing your computer's MAC address, the broadcast address, and the router's WAN MAC address here.
• Stop Wireshark
• Revert to the network setup you have noted above.

From your comment, this looks like the router you're using. I can't find an English-labeled schema and I don't speak Turkish, but if you are currently connecting to your ISP through an ethernet cable in Port E, this approach should be applicable.

Answer 2

Your ISP can detect it as they are directly connected to your router. They could do a broadcast from the other side and get the MAC using ARP.

A website or other internet connected host can't tell you what your WAN MAC would be: as an IP packet travels through a network it uses for each hop a different source and destination MAC address.

See for more info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms817953.aspx

So, your options are:

1) Ask your ISP, though the chances are slim to none that they will tell your MAC.

2) Ask your ISP if they want to allow your own router.

Answer 3

In order to find out your router's WAN MAC address, what you need to do is:

Login to your router from your computer by using the sysadmin account (Windows) or root account(Unix, Linux) from your browser or a Terminal window command line.

From your browser, your computer (may) have a local IP address as 192.168.1.2 and your router probably has the local IP address of 192.168.1.1 which should be typed into the browser's location bar address window as: http://192.168.1.1

After that you should be prompted for the admin password of the router. Note: there is always a default manufacturer set admin password for all routers just as there is a Mac address set at the factory for the Network Interface Card (NIC) for WAN in the router. Consult your router's documentation if you have neither modified the router's admin password (something everyone should do for security purposes) or consult your password manager for the password you should have saved if you did change it. If you have not changed the router's password and no longer have the router's documentation, you can alternatively, look up the router's documentation online at the manufacturer's website, or if your router was supplied by your ISP, you can visit your ISP's website to locate any router documentation they may have.

Once logged into the router as admin/root, then look around for the router's Mac address via the Graphical user interfaces presented to you at login.

With regard to ISP router documentation, depending on which ISP service you have, some ISP router documentations include procedures to change your physical router to one of your choice with an example of how to accomplish the change. After that you would give back the ISP supplied router. Since the new router has it's own MAC address for its NIC card, there would be no need to "clone" the old MAC address to the new router - i.e. each separate physical router has its own MAC address.