Network Commands

Modified on Mon, 15 Jun, 2015 at 3:02 PM

Mac does come with "Network Utility" which gives you a GUI interface for common commands such as PING, WHOIS, INFO, NETSTAT,LOOKUP,TRACEROUTE,etc. In older Macs (OS 10 - 10.8), Network Utility is found in Applications/Utilities. In the newer macs, (OS 10.9 and higher), it is found in a different location which is System/Library/CoreServices/Applications. 




However, for those that want to be adventurous, here are some terminal commands to use. 


For the following commands, en0 is usually ethernet and en1 is wireless.


To display a Mac network interface's IP address (for the wireless network interface, denoted by en1), enter this command:

ipconfig getifaddr en0

To display a Mac network interface's subnet mask, enter this command:

ipconfig getoption en1 subnet_mask

To determine the DNS server a Mac's network interface is set to leverage, enter this command:

ipconfig getoption en1 domain_name_server

To determine the DNS server a Mac's network interface is set to leverage, enter this command:

ipconfig getoption en1 domain_name_server

To determine the router and DHCP information supplied to a Mac's network interface, enter this command:

ipconfig getpacket en1

Was this article helpful?

That’s Great!

Thank you for your feedback

Sorry! We couldn't be helpful

Thank you for your feedback

Let us know how can we improve this article!

Select at least one of the reasons
CAPTCHA verification is required.

Feedback sent

We appreciate your effort and will try to fix the article