Using the ipconfig Utility

Using the ipconfig Utility

Because Windows NT was designed to be UNIX compatible, Windows NT (as well as its later incarnations, including Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003) and UNIX have several
functions and utilities in common. You can use many UNIX command-line utilities at the command prompt of Windows NT and later operating systems, including these:

•  ftp
• ping
• tracert
• ipconfig

The Windows utility ipconfig does roughly the same job as its Windows 95/98 counterpart, winipcfg. With Windows ipconfig, however, the display is command-line based.

NOTE:

You can also use the ipconfig utility in Windows 98, with slightly diminished features. winipcfg still remains the most useful of the two utilities in Windows 98.

1.Choose Start Programs Accessories Command Prompt to display the command prompt.

2. Type ipconfig, which produces output similar to the following:

C:>ipconfig 

Windows 2000 IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter E100B1:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :IP Address. . . . . . .  : 192.168.1.101Subnet Mask . .  . . . . : 255.255.255.0Default Gateway . .  . . : 192.168.1.1

C:\>


As you can see, this output is similar to the information in the Windows 95/98 IP Configuration dialog box except that the MAC address is not listed, although with the /all switch you can obtain that as well.

Only four switches can be used with the ipconfig command. Table 4.5 lists and describes all four switches, and the output that follows Table 4.5 shows the results of using the /all switch with ipconfig.

TABLE 4 . 5 ipconfig Switches

The following shows sample output produced by using the ipconfig /all switch:

C:\>ipconfig/all

Windows 2000 IP Configuration

Ethernet adapter Wireless-G Notebook Adapter:

TIP:

Because Windows servers can (and often do) have more than one TCP/IP interface, you can specify which interface you want to view statistics for by placing its address on the command line with the switches. If you don’t specify, ipconfig displays information for all interfaces.