Get device details from MAC Address

Question

I have used the SendArp API function to retrieve the MAC addresses that are present on my network.

Now that I have a MAC address, I would like to retrieve further information about this device (name, type, manufacturer name, etc.), but I don't know which API is (most) suited for this.

Can anybody help?

Answer 1

The only information you can get from a MAC address is the manufacturer, you can find a list here: http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/oui.txt . Keep in mind that this is the manufacturer of the network interface, it's possible to have a network interface from vendor A inside a device of vendor B.

To get more information you need to connect to the device, probably using the IP address, not the MAC address. You can use WMI for Windows, SSH for Linux and SNMP for printers/switches/PSU's etc.