Find a Routers IP Address in Mac OS X
Wondering how to find the routers IP address that your Mac is connected to? It’s pretty simple:
- Launch “System Preferences” and click on “Network”
- Click on the “Advanced” button in the lower right corner
- Click on the TCP/IP tab and find the router IP next to “Router:” in the format of x.x.x.x
In the example screenshot above, the routers address is 192.168.1.1
To clarify here, the routers IP and your own IP address are different things. Being the start of a network, the access point typically holds the very first IP address on the network, ending in .1 or .100, and then individual IP’s are counted from there. If you know the format of the networks assigned IP’s you can often just guess this, because if your machines IP is 192.168.1.5 it’s a very good chance the routers is 192.168.1.1, and so on.
So why would you need this info? For one, if you’re setting manual TCP/IP settings, but it can also be crucial for troubleshooting network issues. I had to walk someone through this over the phone this morning when troubleshooting a relatively common Wi-Fi connectivity problem in Lion, which for OS X 10.7 at least, the simplest solution is often to use a keepalive script or to ping the router to maintain constant data transfer between the Mac and elsewhere.
Everyone should know this…
Agreed, but not all users do. Our readership is a diverse crowd in terms of knowledge.
> Being the start of a network, the access point typically holds the very first IP address on the network, ending in .1 or .100
> or .100
What? The only subnet sizes in which .100 could be called “the very first IP address” are /32s and /31s.
Not only that, but the very first IP address in a network is the network address. Routers are often on the first usable host IP address. But that’s nitpicking.
Get your apostrophes fixed will you! It’s – Find a Router’s IP Address and Microsoft’s stuff etc. How can I take this site seriously?
netstat -rn | grep default
I like netstat -rn | grep default. So much simpler.
[...] For users who don’t want to bother with the command line, the router IP can also be found from the Network system preference panel. [...]