How to find Ethernet network interface card information in Linux

Last updated on December 8, 2020 by Dan Nanni

Sometimes you may want to know the product name or hardware settings of the network interface cards (NICs) attached to your Linux system. For example when you check whether a particular network device driver or a kernel module is compatible with your Ethernet adapter, you need to know its hardware specification such as NIC model/vendor (e.g., Broadcom NetXtreme, Intel I350), speed (e.g., 1GB/s, 10GB/s), link mode (e.g., full/half duplex), etc.

In this tutorial, I will describe how to find Ethernet NIC information from the command line in Linux.

Method One: ethtool

The first method is to use ethtool, a command-line tool for checking or modifying PCI-based Ethernet card settings.

To install ethtool on Ubuntu or Debian:

$ sudo apt-get install ethtool

To install ethtool on Fedora, CentOS or RedHat:

$ sudo yum install ethtool

To display hardware settings of a network interface card with ethtool, run the following command. It is assumed that the NIC card is assigned the name eth0. The reason for sudo access in this case is to allow ethtool to obtain wake-on-LAN settings and link status.

$ sudo ethtool eth0

Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Advertised pause frame use: No
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 1000Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: Twisted Pair
        PHYAD: 1
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        MDI-X: Unknown
        Supports Wake-on: g
        Wake-on: g
        Link detected: yes

To find Ethernet device driver and firmware information:

$ ethtool -i eth0

driver: bnx2
version: 2.1.6
firmware-version: bc 5.2.3 NCSI 2.0.6
bus-info: 0000:03:00.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: yes
supports-register-dump: yes

To find factory-default MAC address information:

$ ethtool -P eth0

Permanent address: 9c:8e:99:12:2d:8a

Method Two: lshw

The second method is via lshw, a command-line utility for showing detailed hardware specification of a Linux machine.

To install lshw on Ubuntu or Debian:

$ sudo apt-get install lshw

To install lshw on CentOS or RedHat, first set up Repoforge repository on your system, and then run:

$ sudo yum install lshw

To install lshw on Fedora, simply run:

$ sudo yum install lshw

To show detailed vendor information of your NIC, run the following.

$ sudo lshw -class network

  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: NetXtreme II BCM5709 Gigabit Ethernet
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 20
       serial: d4:85:64:77:f3:54
       size: 1GB/s
       capacity: 1GB/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm vpd msi msix pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=bnx2 driverversion=1.7.5 duplex=full firmware=5.2.3 NCSI 2.0.6 ip=192.168.10.78 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=1GB/s
       resources: irq:16 memory:f4000000-f5ffffff memory:e6100000-e610ffff(prefetchable)

Method Three: lspci

If all you need to know is the product/vendor name of your Ethernet card, you can use lspci command which displays information about PCI buses and connected PCI devices.

To install lspci on Ubuntu or Debian:

$ sudo apt-get install pciutils

To install lspci on CentOS, Fedora or RedHat:

$ sudo yum install pciutils

To find the name of Ethernet card(s) available on your system, run the following.

$ lspci | grep -i 'ethernet'

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5709 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)

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