Vendor
The first three bytes are the OUI, a prefix the IEEE sells to a manufacturer. The vendor is the company it is registered to, which may make the network chip rather than the device.
MAC address lookup
Find the maker of the device behind a MAC address, and whether the device made the address up. It runs in your browser: nothing you type is sent anywhere.
- MAC address
- F0:D1:A9:3C:5E:71
- Vendor
- Loading the vendor list
- Delivery
- Unicast
- Administered
- Globally unique
What each figure means
What the first three bytes of a MAC say, and why a hotspot sees so many that say nothing.
Randomised by the device
Android, iOS and Windows can give each Wi-Fi network its own made-up address, with the locally administered bit set. A phone can come back to a hotspot with a new MAC, so the address alone does not identify a returning customer.
Unicast and multicast
The lowest bit of the first byte. A device's own address is unicast; multicast addresses, such as 01:00:5E for IPv4 multicast and FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF for broadcast, go to a group.
Where the list comes from
The IEEE public MA-L registry of 24-bit prefixes, built into a file your browser loads once. Vendor names are shortened, so "Apple, Inc." reads as Apple.