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recently I turned my Router to a wireless access point for my home network. Unfortunately, I forgot to note down the AP's IP Address and Subnet.

How do I reliably get the IP of my AP?

Thank's in advance.

EDIT: OS is Vista XP, but I have xubuntu dual booted.

Ok so the configuration is as follow: PCs => (wireless) Belkin Router (AP) -> (wired, bridged) 2Wire Gateway Modem

I want to be able to get the IP Address of the AP, ie. the Belkin Router

quack quixote
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Andreas Wong
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  • Possible duplicate: http://superuser.com/questions/142851/get-ip-address-of-router – Hello71 Jun 05 '10 at 13:36
  • In my care, it's a bridged network, in the link you've given, it's a normal PC -> Modem network. So I don't think it's duplicate. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 13:41
  • What is the ip address of your computer? If you haven't made any drastic changes, it should default to xx.xx.xx.1 (where xx is the same as your computer's) – default Jun 05 '10 at 14:23
  • Can't you just plug your computer into the router? Or do you have the Ethernet ports disabled? – Hello71 Jun 06 '10 at 16:10

14 Answers14

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Since it is simply functioning as a WAP device now, short of reseting the WAP and using the default, it might not be all that easy.

Try going through your ARP cache (arp -a in windows, might be similar in linux) and see if the WAP has an entry. Just try each address on your local subnet that's listed.

Other than that, the WAP should be completely transparent so unless you're already communicating with its IP, its IP probably won't show up in network traffic.

Darth Android
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Unless you get get in in from your arp cache (try doing ping 192.168.0.255 first), the only way I know to find it is port scanning. Using something like nmap to scan your network - a WAP should be listening on port 80, and possibly something like telnet as well. Try nmap 192.168.0.1/24

Dentrasi
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to accomplish this on a modern windows OS from the command line

netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid

find the network to which you are interested and connected, note the bssid and then run

arp -a

now find the bssid you discovered above in the new list of physical addresses, your access points internet address is listed on the same line.

user975387
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IPCONFIG /ALL (in a command line in Windows) will tell you under the heading Default Gateway. ifconfig under Linux will tell you, and also on Mac OS X (command line), and in the GUI: Network preferences, select wireless, advanced (right below) and TCP/IP tab, router entry.

Henno
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    It tells me the IP address of the modem, but not the Access Point. Perhaps a bit of background will be useful, my configuration is: PCs => Belkin Router (AP) -> (wired) Gateway Modem if I do ipconfig /all, it will tell me the Gateway Modem's IP, but not the AP. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 13:01
  • The router will give the IP addresses, right, so look for the DHCP server IP. It's also listed if memory serves me. – Henno Jun 05 '10 at 13:16
  • The DNS address is coincidentally the same as gateway address. So no, I don't think it works. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 13:18
  • I corrected it to DHCP – Henno Jun 05 '10 at 13:20
  • and conveniently, it's also the same as DNS and gateway. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 13:23
  • And a LAN scanner (google to find one)? – Henno Jun 05 '10 at 13:30
  • I used Angry IP Scanner and scanned from 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255, and nil =/. Thank's for attempting to help tho. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 13:40
  • I presume the modem's acting as DHCP server, NAT and default gateway? What were your computer's IP settings when you did the scan above? If you have a /24 mask (coming from your DHCP server) then the majority of those addresses scanned wouldn't work anyway. Make sure that your real router thinks that its subnet is 255.255.0.0 (so that your computer knows to use ARP to get the MAC address connected with the IP address, and not to forward to the default gateway). HTH – Andy Jun 05 '10 at 16:11
  • Now that you talked about subnet, I just checked from my gateway page that its subnet is 255.255.255.255 (single node in the subnet), however, my ipconfig reports that the subnet is 255.255.255.0. Can you shed me a light on those numbers please? – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 18:57
  • An IP address contains two numbers: the network and host numbers. Where the dividing line is between these two numbers isn't constant over all IP addresses. If someone has a /16 address, that means a 16 bit network number, leaving a 16 bit host number. If a /24 address then a 24 bit network number leaving an 8 bit host number. Why this matters here is that the IP protocol handles the situation of sending a packet to the same subnet differently to a different subnet. You want it to think that every address you test is on the same subnet, so your comp's IP address should have a 255.255.0.0 mask. – Andy Jun 05 '10 at 19:33
  • Ok, changed my subnet to 255.255.0.0 and when I scan the second time around, I can see 192.168.2.254, but I can't seem to go there via my browser =(. – Andreas Wong Jun 06 '10 at 03:47
  • What's the browser's error screen? – Andy Jun 06 '10 at 10:53
  • Chrome says it can't connect to the specified host. I am able to ping, but not from browser, I guess the host is really up, just that somehow the 80 port is not accessible. – Andreas Wong Jun 06 '10 at 13:19
  • Dunno if it could help, but try changing your subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and IP address range 192.168.2.x. – Andy Jun 06 '10 at 13:23
  • And try a `telnet 192.168.2.254 80` and see what happens. – Andy Jun 06 '10 at 13:27
  • My vista installation interestingly doesn't have telnet installed... I'll dual boot to xubuntu and try later tonight. – Andreas Wong Jun 07 '10 at 03:12
  • Madness! Would be interested to know what happens under xubuntu. (You could also use PuTTY under Win.) – Andy Jun 08 '10 at 10:33
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Default IP is 192.168.2.1 for a Belkin router, but can't you do a tracert to, say google.com and then find out which one is your router? (It should usually be the first hop.)

Or you could look in your browser's history...

Hello71
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  • The first hop is the Gateway, not the AP unfortunately :( – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 13:42
  • +1 for tracert. @Andreas: If your network traffic passes the AP you should still be able to find out the ipaddress of it with tracert. In the tracertstats, is there any other ip-addresses that are on the same subnet as your computer's? – default Jun 05 '10 at 14:19
  • Nope, sadly it goes straight to the Gateway – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 14:43
  • a WAP doesn't work at the network layer so you won't see an IP hop. – Andy Jun 05 '10 at 16:15
  • That's an interesting point, do you have a more elaborate explanation/article on that? – Andreas Wong Jun 07 '10 at 03:23
  • Basically it's a question of how routing works and what a WAP's role is. The WAP effectively extends an existing network; it doesn't enable inter-network comms. A router is used/required to access IP addresses on a different network. – Andy Jun 08 '10 at 13:01
  • If it just passes through anyways, then why won't it just pass through all IPs (including the one you assigned)? – Hello71 Jul 04 '10 at 19:57
  • @Hello71 I'm sorry, I don't follow the Q? – Andy Jul 07 '10 at 08:50
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You do not need to reset the Belkin router, can you follow below steps:-

  1. Connect to the Belkin AP using LAN cable
  2. Change your machine IP address to 192.168.2.50, subnet 255.255.255.0, leave blank for gateway and dns
  3. From your browser, go to 192.168.2.254 then you will go to the Belkin setup page
VL-80
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Ricky Kong
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  • This will only work if the Belkin router is `192.168.2.254`. The OP has said he doesn't know the IP at all. – Burgi May 08 '16 at 15:04
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I had the same problem. From my Windows 7 PC, i could do a ping on the local subnet by typing

ping 192.168.X.255 -- where X is your local subnet. This should send a broadcast to ALL ips in the subnet. Of course, the ping command will fail.

Next type arp -a This should now list ALL the ping responses received on the subnet. Note that if there are systems on the subnet which have ECHO RESPONSE turned OFF, they wont show up in the list.

One of the these IPs listed will be your AP's IP. If not sure, lookup on the MAC and find out who the vendor is... (http://www.macvendorlookup.com/)

HTH

-A's B

Bala
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If you are using Linux, check the interface you are using with:

$ ifconfig

Then (if connected by WLAN):

$ iwconfig wlp2s0

Extract the MAC address of the access point from the response, and use nmap to check the devices in your network:

$ sudo nmap -sn 192.168.0.1/24

Find the MAC address in the list and its reference to the IP address.

MJH
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Segaroma
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  • It is very difficult to determine an address of a transparent device, e.g. switch or WAP, because the device may have an address in a different network and would never respond to ARP on your network. – Ron Maupin Dec 10 '16 at 05:48
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Reset the router to defaults and reconfigure?

Andy
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  • I could do that, but I really want to know if there's a way to do get IP Address of an AP. Thank's for the suggestion though. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 14:43
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you should be able to see this from the 2wire web interface. I'm assuming that it is a router which is the gateway address from ipconfig. Most likely would be in the logs. If the belkin was set to dhcp it should be in the dhcp log. the other option would be to use a ping utility to ping every address in the ip range and see which ones respond. if your ip address is 192.168.1.2 say you would ping every address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254.

user4892
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  • I've done that, and I still can't find the AP IP Address. – Andreas Wong Jun 05 '10 at 18:51
  • can you plug in an ethernet cable into the belkin router and see if you can get an ip address from that router? if you do it will probably have a gateway address which would be the ip address of the belkin router. if all else fails reset the router. Usually if you hold in the reset button for about 30 seconds or so it resets the router to the factory default at which point you can reconfigure it. – user4892 Jun 06 '10 at 03:52
  • Nope, the DHCP, DNS and Gateway again are pointing to my Gateway Modem even on ethernet. I think I will start considering reseting the router . – Andreas Wong Jun 06 '10 at 03:56
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In the command prompt you can do arp -a This will show you the MAC address and IP of everything connected to the same broadcast domain that you are. Given your setup, this should show you everything on your network. You can figure out the IP by finding out the MAC address of your AP. Usually this is printed right on the device itself somewhere.

MDMarra
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Use this command ( This gives details about all active ips starting with 192.168.1. & their mac & brand ):

sudo arp-scan 192.168.1.0/24

Above command can be read as below

This will give the list of active ips. You can replace 192.168.1.0 with whatever ip u want but the "/24" is a must.

Sorry if there are some mistakes this is my first time writing solutions.

Souce: https://sites.google.com/site/unityindiversity99/

The above website has a lot of solutions for opensource softwares and linux ubuntu

Hope this helps

Vishnu Nithya Soundhar
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    Welcome. That link goes on forever and covers quite a range of stuff. Could you add some kind of identifier to your answer for where in that link to look? Thanks. – fixer1234 Dec 13 '14 at 05:12
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I had the same issue and didn't know the exact nmap syntax to search for, so I've downloaded https://nmap.org/dist/nmap-6.47-setup.exe for windows, typed my network 192.168.0.1/24 in the address field, hit scan, and then checked the results that show with Discovered open port 80/tcp on ... (webservers).

Niloct
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You can use nmap to scan IPs near you own IP.
or use ping:http://www.linuxscrew.com/2007/09/17/ping-range-of-ip-addresses-in-parallel-with-fping/
there are lots of tools doing this in linux.
you can even use aircrack-ng(but this one needs some time to work).
EDIT:
I think transparent routers(I think your router is) don't have IPs.

behrooz
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