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Viewing Network Information on Windows

The Windows family of systems provides the means to display network configuration information using a command-line tool called ipconfig. This utility provides two basic services: to show network configuration information and to exercise limited control over the behavior of the DHCP client. Depending on the version of Windows you are using, the ipconfig options will be slightly different. However, the basic options are supported on most of the versions of Windows. This tool can show both static and dynamic (such as from a DHCP server) networking parameters for all defined interfaces on the system. This command is basically equivalent to the UNIX ifconfig utility, but it gives only a small number of services as compared to the UNIX version. To invoke this tool, open a command prompt window and type the ipconfig command.

The ipconfig command was invoked with the /help option, which displays a list of the available command-line options that are supported. This command provides a small number of command-line arguments, as described in Table 1.

Table 1: ipconfig command-line options

Option and Meaning

/?: Displays a list of command-line options.
/help: Displays a list of command-line options.
/all: Displays all the configuration information available.
/release: Releases the IP address for the specified network interface.
/renew: Obtains (renews) a new expiration date for the assigned IP address.
/Batch: Writes the output to a file.
/renew_all: Renews all interfaces that are configured with DHCP.
/release_all: Releases each IP address for all interfaces configured with DHCP.