Getting an unknown IP Address from known MAC address using ARP?

Question

I am on a Windows platform (Win7) and I have a scenario where I know the MAC addresses of devices but their IPs are dynamically chosen when booting up.

I want to write a batch script that pings these specific devices to make sure they are alive. There are many other devices on the network that I don't want to ping, just a set of 10 specific MACs I want to get the IP address from then ping them only. They are all in the address scheme 10.1.(1-255).(1-255)

This much I know, I can ping the entire address spectrum and then

arp -a > arp.txt

...to output a document containing the list of IPs and associated MAC addresses in this format

Interface: 192.168.2.27 --- 0xb
  Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
  192.168.2.1           00-1f-90-c0-25-fd     dynamic   
  192.168.2.3           00-00-aa-a1-d3-78     dynamic   
  192.168.2.16          ac-72-89-a7-7e-98     dynamic   
  192.168.2.17          78-45-c4-2f-71-0b     dynamic   
  192.168.2.18          68-b5-99-8e-1c-35     dynamic   
  192.168.2.24          b8-ac-6f-30-00-34     dynamic   
  192.168.2.26          00-90-a9-6f-e0-be     dynamic

My question is how can I (via a batch script or other automated method) find the line of the MAC address I am interested in and put the IP address into a variable that I can then use.

In UNIX I can grep but in Windows I'm at a loss.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Install Cygwin and do it the Unix way that you already know? — Brian Knoblauch, Apr 02 '14 at 19:36
@rpax, `type` is the equivalent of `cat`, `find` and `findstr` are the equivalents of `grep`. — Drew Chapin, Apr 02 '14 at 19:58
@BrianKnoblauch I can't really modify the system I'm working on in that fashion. I can run a portable exe file if need be but installing Cygwin isn't possible unfortunately :( — eumoria, Apr 02 '14 at 20:09

Drew Chapin · Answer 1 · 2014-04-04T13:36:06.667

2

Pipe the output to find and use a for loop.

for /f "tokens=1,2,3 delims= " %%i in ('arp -a ^| find "00-1f-90-c0-25-fd"') do (
    set ip=%%i
    set mac=%%j
)

You could alter this a bit to make a batch script that will ping by entering the MAC address like so pingbymac.bat 00-1f-90-c0-25-fd

@for /f "tokens=1,2,3 delims= " %%i in ('arp -a ^| find "%~1"') do (
    ping %%i 
)

edited Apr 04 '14 at 13:36

answered Apr 02 '14 at 20:15

Drew Chapin

7,779
5
58
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1

You can use `%~1` which will remove any surrounding quotes, if they exist, otherwise it will act the same as `%1`. Off topic, but this allows a construct like `"%~1"` to be used in any comparison and will handle quoted or unquoted terms and always return a quoted term. – foxidrive Apr 03 '14 at 10:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 02 '14 at 20:14

1

to find the line:

arp -a |find "78-45-c4-2f-71-0b"

To find the IP-Address only:

for /f %i in ('arp -a ^|find "2c-27-d7-ef-f8-77"') do echo %i

(write %%i instead of %i if using it in a batchfile)

answered Apr 02 '14 at 20:14

Stephan

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91

Getting an unknown IP Address from known MAC address using ARP?

2 Answers2